HISTORY OF STATISTICS
THEIR DEVELOPMENT AND
PROGRESS IN MANY
COUNTRIES .
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The history of statistics, their develop
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THE HISTORY OF STATISTICS
THEIR DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS
IN MANY COUNTRIES
The
History of Statistics
Their Development and Progress
in Many Countries
In Memoirs to Commemorate the Seventy
Fifth Anniversary of The American
Statistical Association
Collected and Edited by
JOHN KOREN
Published for
The American Statistical Association
by
QCde illacmtUan Companp of jgeto ^vk
1918
Copyright
Thb American Statistical Association
1918
TBB BtrMFOBD PBEB8
COirCOBDi IT. B. X.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
BOOK I
Historical and Commemorative Addresses
THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION, 1839-1914 .
By John Koren, President
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS IN STATISTICS: The Out-
look FOB THE Future 15
By S. N. D. North, LL.D., Assistant Secretary and^Statistidan of the
Carnegie Endowmeni for IniernatioruA Peace; Ex-President of the
American Statistical Assodalvm; Former Director of the United
States Census
BOOK II
History and Development of Official Statistics
IN Many Countries
AUSTRALIA 53
By George Handlet Knibbs, C.M.G., F.S.S., Honorary Member
American Statistical Association, Member I.I.S., etc.
AUSTRIA 83
By Dr. Robert Meyer, Privy Councillor, Former Minister of Finance,
late President of the Imperial and Royal Central Statistical Commis-
BELGIUM 123
By Dr. Armand Julin, Director-General of the Belgian Labor Bureau,
Member of the International Statistical Institute
CANADA 177
By Ernest H. Godfrey, F.S.S., Member of the International Statistical
Institute; Editor, Census and Statistics Office, Ottawa, Canada
VI CONTENTS
DENMARK 199
By Adolf Jensen, CAief of the Statistical Department of Denmark
FRANCE 215
By Fernand Faueb, Professor of Law at the University of Paris, Member
of the Central Statistical Commission
GERMANY 331
By Dr. Eugene WiJRZBtrRGEH, Privy Councillor, Director of the Royal
Statistical State Office in Dresden
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 363
By Sir Athelstane Baines, C.S.I., Ex-President of the Royal Statis-
tical Society
HUNGARY 391
By De. Ladislaus von Budat, Ministerial^Sektionsrat
INDIA 415
By Sir Athelstane Baines, C.S.I., Ex-President of the Royal Statistical
Society
ITALY*
By C. A. AsCHiEKl, Inspector-General of Statistics
JAPAN*
By S. Takarabe, Professor of Statistics at the University of Tokyo
NETHERLANDS.; . . : 427
By Dr C. a. Verrijn Sttjart, Professor of Statistics and Economics at
the University of Groningen, Chairman of the Central Commission for
Statistics
NORWAY 445
By A. N. KiAER, Chi^ and Director of the Statistical Bureau, 1867-1913
RUSSIA 467
By Dr. A. Katjfmann, Professor of Statistics at Petrograd
* For the countries marked with an * the articles were promised by the authors
named, but their work was interrupted by the war and the articles have not
arrived in time to be included in the volume.
CONTENTS vii
SWEDEN 535
By Dr. Edvabd Abosenius, Firxt Actuary of the Central Statistical Bureau
UNITED STATES 571
FEDERAL STATISTICS. By John Ctjmmings, Ph.D., Statistician.
United Stales Bureau of the Census
STATE STATISTICS. By Chableb F. Gettemt, Director, Mass-
achusetts Bureau of Statistics
INTRODUCTION
The motive that inspired this volume was to mark the
Seventy fifth Anniversary of the American Statistical Asso-
ciation by a serviceable contribution to our knowledge of
statistics. The opportunity was found in preparing a his-
tory of the development and organization of official statis-
tics throughout the world. By the aid of certain commemo-
rative publications and other scattered documents one
could piece together more or less complete sketches of the
status of statistics in this or that country covering various
periods of time; for most countries comprehensive and
authoritative statements were lacking. The story had not
yet been written as a whole and in detail how different
nations have systematized information about themselves,
what statistical means they employed, and what has been
accomplished to the end that national forces and resources
might be placed under wise direction and legislation.
The history of the development and organization of
official statistics is not a barren record of steps in a scientific
process of dealing with facts, but of efforts to get a working
knowledge about the fundamental elements in the life of a
country — the population, its environment, and its manifold
economic and social relations. By taking measure of these
elements, statistics reveal the condition of growth and trend
in every direction and set out the milestones for the guidance
of the administrator and legislator. But the manner in
which the science of statistics has been applied also carries
many practical lessons, for out of the abundant experience
of others the rest of us must learn. Although the official
statisticians of the different countries in the main are occu-
pied with the same problems, the conditions under which
they labor vary according to the tradition, experience,
recognized needs and legislation of each country, out of
which have grown the present forms of statistical organiza-
X MEMORIAL VOLUME
tion. No two countries have an identical programme of
statistical work, nor the same agencies for carrying it out.
The common aim has been diversely pursued, sometimes
disappointingly and again with marvelous success. To tell
the story of it all is the purpose of our Memorial Volume.
Happily it is told by those who know it best, who in large
part have lived it, and whose authority illuminates every
page. The foremost statisticians of many lands were in-
duced to write these memoirs to meet a need of so great an
importance that not even the Great War could obliterate
it.
The preliminary arrangements for the volume were made
at the end of 1913 and the beginning of the following year.
It was hoped to publish by the close of 1914. Some of the
manuscripts were at hand before the outbreak of the war,
and among them, the history of the statistics of Belgium,
written by Dr. Armand JuUn, reached the editor shortly
prior to the fateful August 4, 1914. But several of the most
important memoirs were still uncompleted, and the world
was at war. After much anxious correspondence a Russian
collaborator was secured, in Professor A. Kaufmann of Petro-
grad, but he could not finish his exhaustive study until the
second year of the war. Dr. Eugene Wiirzburger, Director
of the State Statistical Department of Saxony, had only
written a few pages of the history of German statistics when
the exigencies of the war compelled him to lay it aside and
not until 1916 could he conclude the diflficult task. M. Fer-
nand Faure, Professor of Law at the University of Paris and
editor of the Revue Politique et Parlementaire, who had
undertaken to prepare the memoir for France, was obliged
to postpone it from time to time at the call of other duties.
For most of the important belligerent countries the expected
contributions were ready a year ago; but it was resolved not
to publish until France could be worthily represented^ An
appeal was finally made to His Excellency M. Jusserand, the
ambassador of France to the United States, who graciously
promised to intercede with his government so that Professor
INTRODUCTION XI
Faure might be given leisure to assemble his rich material.
This has been done in an extensive memoir of rare merit.
Also for some of the lesser countries were the studies com-
pleted amid the distractions of the Great War.
Probably no other international work has been prepared
under greater diflSculties, and none of more permanent value.
It has come into being during a world conflict; it is without
a counterpart in any language; it could not now be dupli-
cated; and it marks a distinct era in official statistics which
the war brought to a close. From this world-wide disturb-
ance a new order of things will emerge that is certain pro-
foundly to affect the future development of statistical work.
Thus the volume in a special sense becomes an invaluable
historical document telling the ways and means whereby
civilized countries so far have taken measure of their material
and social conditions — a monument to a bygone age.
The practical usefulness of these memoirs the reader
must search out for himself. Only this may be said : There
is nowhere evidence of contentment with past performances
in the field of statistics; the shortcomings of most forms of
statistical organization are cheerfully recognized; there is
manifest desire, even expectancy, of richer service under
better auspices; and the need is emphasized of cooperative
effort so that the statistician's dream may be realized
of international comparability in many statistical under-
takings. For long years the masters of our science have
striven toward this goal. Must they henceforth go their
several ways because those who would stand together for
the time have been parted? Perhaps this Memorial Volume
may in slight measure serve to strengthen the international
bonds and reknit those that have been severed, since it indi-
cates so clearly that we cannot attain the highest ends of
statistics except through mutual understanding and help-
fulness.
To the many collaborators, some of whom the editor has
unblushingly importuned at all seasons to complete their
promised tasks, the American Statistical Association begs to
XU MEMORIAL VOLUME
extend its lasting gratitude. The volume is a memorial to
the dead and living among them as well as to our Association.
Thanks are also due to the members who have assisted in
preparing translations of articles and given other support.
J. K.
January 1st, 1918.
BOOK I
HISTORICAL AND COMMEMORATIVE
ADDRESSES
THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION
1839-1914
By John Koren
President, 1913 and 19U
Seventy fifth Anniversary, February 13, 1914
A page of the unpretentious volume containing the first
proceedings of our society bears this legend: "Here close
the records of the American Statistical Association for the
first quarter of a century." A special committee which had
been appointed to consider the advisability of a formal
celebration of the event, reported it to be "inexpedient."
Did modesty deter them, or perhaps the overhanging shad-
ows of the Civil War.'' The records do not say. We of a
later day know that these pathfinders in a statistical wilder-
ness were not at all disheartened as they looked back upon
their labors of twenty five years. Indeed, there seems to
have been something prophetic in the words, "Here close the
records of the American Statistical Association for the first
quarter of a century." Who wrote them looked forward
to other milestones in the history of our organization, to
new and perhaps ampler records of achievement; and we
are gathered to bear testimony that his faith did not belie
him.
That small company of men, meeting in 1839 at No. 15
Comhill, Boston, to organize a statistical society, built
securely upon a broad foundation. "The objects of the
society," says the first constitution, "shall be to collect,
preserve and diffuse statistical information in the different
departments of human knowledge." How these objects were
to be reached is elaborately set forth in the by-laws, no less
than thirty three in number. They provide, among other
things, that "the operations of this Association shall prin-
cipally be directed to the statistics of the United States; and
they shall be as general and as extensive as possible and not
4 MEMORIAL VOLUME
confined to any particular part of the country. . .
The labors of the Association may embrace all subjects."
The by-laws also planned for a statistical library and stated
that "efforts to diffuse statistical information shall be made
by printing and publishing circulars, reports, a periodical or
occasional volume." The very first committee appointed
after organization had been perfected was one to have charge
of eventual publications.
From the outset membership in the Association was con-
sidered a serious affair. On being elected, the fellows sub-
scribed to a solemn "obligation" to conform to the constitu-
tion and by-laws. It was made "the duty of every fellow
to prepare at least one article a year on some statistical
subject which shall be at the disposal of the publishing
committee." And to add greater dignity to fellowship, it
was stipulated that "a diploma, in a form prescribed by the
board of directors, signed by the president and recording
secretary, accompanaed with the seal of the Association,
shall be given to every member."
Thus seventy five years ago the fair enterprise was launched
by a little band of enthusiasts who labored diligently to
inform themselves and others, and who, looking forward
with rare courage to the things to be, rather than to the
present, wrote aboiit the Science of Statistics, always spelling
it with a capital S. At that time the professional statis-
tician was not, and the statistical output almost negligible.
Even in its early stages the Association lacked that paro-
chial flavor which some have imputed to it. It was not
preoccupied by local affairs or wasting time in mutual self-
admiration over Massachusetts men and things. At the
very outset contact with a larger world was sought through
its foreign and corresponding secretaries, and within a year
it counted corresponding members in about a dozen states.
At the first quarterly meeting it reached out beyond the
United States by electing foreign members, the fir^t of whom
was the foremost statistician of his day, Adolphe Quetelet.
There is something touching in the fidelity with which
AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 5
the founders of our Association sought to work out its objects.
Year by year the same small group, usually under a dozen,
regularly attended the four quarterly meetings, encouraging
each other to original eflfort in statistical work and garnering
diligently helpful knowledge from various sources. Nothing
testifies more eloquently to the statistical poverty of the
time than the publications collected as the beginnings of a
library. Among the works donated we find mention of
Pitkin's "Statistical View," Hazard's "Statistical Register,"
"Bills of Mortality of Philadelphia from 1820 to 1839," by
Dr. Henry Bond, the few volumes of the United States
Census, schedules for taking the census, statistical forms
and questions used by the Statistical Society of London,
forms used in France for the registration of births, marriages
and deaths, unnamed statistical tables of Massachusetts by
A. W. B. Peabody, etp. Then there was the impeifect
material found in local, state and federal reports of all kinds
which were collected in large numbers. Many non-statis-
tical works were presented to the library, sometimes by the
authors. Thus Emerson gave his lectures and Prescott
various volumes.
A feature of these early meetings was the reading of
communications of different sorts. Mention is made of
letters received from President Martin Van Buren, Thomas
L. Winthrop, John Pickering, Benjamin F. Butler, LL.D.
(of New York), Levi Woodbury and William Prescott, all
of them honorary members; and from Caleb Cushing, Lewis
Cass, Governor Plummer, Thomas Lawson, Surgeon-General
of the Army. Following the reading of letters came the
statistical essay. The first one recorded was by Lemuel
Shattuck on statistics of Saxony. The early addresses cov-
ered such subjects as statistics of pauperism, of crime, of
immigration, of the Massachusetts population, etc. Some
bore curious titles. Thus the indefatigable long-time record-
ing secretary of the Association, Joseph B. Felt, presented
statistics of the number and kind of carriages in Massachu-
setts in 1756. Another gave statistics of the funeral charges
6 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in the interment of Governor Winslow in 1680, and once,
when there must have been a dearth of statistical material,
someone read a paper on a tornado that had disturbed the
calm of Medford.
Not all who dived into the uncharted statistical seas
brought up a perfect pearl. Some of us fail to do so now,
and those intrepid founders of our Association were indeed
rari nantes in gurgite vasto. Yet solid contributions to knowl-
edge were made. Within ten years there had been read
before the Association more than thirty addresses upon a
wide range of topics. The question of publication soon
became pressing. Although the first volume of the Associa-
tion was not published until 1847, the first part of it appeared
in 1843, the second in 1845 and the last in 1847. "They
give," says Dr. Samuel A. Green, "a large amount of original
statistical matter, and on every page show signs of patient
research and thorough work." *
But the Association found other work to hand than that
of reading essays, and soon set about the greater task of
improving the sources of statistical knowledge. Naturally
enough, attention was first turned to vital statistics. Al-
ready in 1840 a committee was appointed to "lay the subject
of registration before the General Court," and in the follow-
ing year a committee was formed to report on a plan of
registration. Evidently, the legislature was not very tract-
able, for it was memoriahzed on the subject of vital statistics
at intervals for many years. Other things for which the
Association sought legislative authority during the first
twenty five years of its existence were: The appointment of
a sanitary commission (1847-8); for improved hospital sta-
tistics; for returns to the Secretary of State of pauperism,
crime and immigration (1850); for a decennial census of
the commonwealth beginning 1855 (1850) ; for the establish-
ment of a state board of health, to have charge of registration
• An account of the collections of the American Statistical Association by
the Hon. Saml. A. Green, M.D., Librarian Massachusetts Historical Society,
new series of publications No. 31.
AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 7
and of the census, and several other matters. For long years
afterwards the Association continued its activity for the
betterment of Massachusetts statistics; and to its efforts is
due in large part that this commonwealth has taken foremost
rank in statistical work.
Meanwhile, the Association had sought larger fields.
Frdm the beginning it became closely identified with the
affairs of the United States census. In 1844 it petitioned
Congress that the Sixth Census "be revised and a new and
accurate copy be published." As the time for taking the
Seventh Census approached (1848), a committee was ap-
pointed to prepare and submit plans for it and to memorialize
Congress "to take measures to render the Census more
accurate." It was at the suggestion of Lemuel Shattuck, a
charter member of the Association, and N. Capen, another
member, that Congress created a census board charged with
the planning for the Census of 1850. Edward C. Lunt, in
his History of the United States Census, records that "sev-
eral eminent statisticians," — ^Mr. Shattuck, Dr. Chickering,
Mr. Capen and Dr. Jarvis (then President of the Association),
"were invited to Washington for consultation with the new
board." Indeed, we know that Lemuel Shattuck, who had
gained large practical experience in compiling a census of
Boston for the year 1845 and in other ways, prepared most
of the schedules adopted. Dr. Jarvis became closely identi-
fied with the Eighth Census, that of i860, for he wrote the
section on vital statistics. He complained (it sounds so
reasonable) that the material furnished him was often
"imperfect, inconsistent or unreasonable." The same inde-
fatigable Dr. Jarvis also rendered valuable services to the
Census of 1870. These men set high standards, insisting
upon it that those entrusted with the oversight of important
statistical work "should be appointed, not for their political
opinions but for their scientific attainments and knowledge,"
and they were unsparing in their criticism of a faulty output.
But to realize how closely this Association has been affili-
ated throughout its entire history with the United States
8 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Census, it suflSces to record the names of some of the men
at the head of the Censuses: John B. D. DeBow, superinten-
dent of the Seventh, was a corresponding member of our
Association; General Walker, its president from 1883-1897,
had charge of the Ninth and initiated the Tenth; Colonel
Wright, our president from 1897-1909, finished the Eleventh;
S. N. D. North, another president, was the first director of
the permanent census office; and E. Dana Durand, for sev-
eral years one of our vice-presidents, was director of the
Thirteenth Census. Space forbids the mention of all offi-
cers and members who in the remote or recent past have
rendered service to the great office of the census.
Other branches of the federal government occasionally
sought the help of the Association. Particularly was this
true of the Treasury Department. In 1845 its secretary
requested the Association to aid him in preparing his report
to the next Congress. In later years the Treasury Depart-
ment appears to have been in frequent communication with
the Association and several of the secretaries have been
among our members. The Commission on Education also
drew upon the services of the Association.
Although the Association from the beginning had sought
touch with European statistical affairs, it was not until 1860
that an opportunity presented itself for participation in an
International Statistical Congress, the one held in London
that year, and to which the Association fitly sent Dr. Jarvis
as its representative. Some time later a letter he had
written from London at that time was read at a meeting
and the records state that in it he "detailed the action of
Judge Longstreet of South Carolina, the delegate from the
United States, and Mr. Dallas, the American Minister,
relative to a remark of Lord Brougham construed to be
an insult to our country, — ^Dallas and Longstreet seemed at
the time to consider slavery of supreme importance."
The next International Statistical Congress, at Berlin,
1865, was attended by E. B. Eliott as the delegate from the
Association. He, together with Dr. Jarvis, was delegated
AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 9
to the International Statistical Congress held at St. Peters-
burg. Dr. Jarvis apparently did not go; the Hon. E. H.
Derby, another member, seems to have taken his place. It
is not recorded that the Association was oflScially represented
at any other statistical meeting abroad until 1885, when
General Walker attended the conferences at Paris and
London, which resulted in the formation of the International
Statistical Institute. It is interesting to note that as dele-
gates returned from these international meetings, they were
especially requested to report upon the progress of statistical
science abroad. Another means of communication with
European statistical interests was through the honorary and
foreign members like Rawson W. Rawson, John Bowring,
William Farr, some of whom from time to time sent in
communications, and through statistical organizations, par-
ticularly the Royal Statistical Society of England, whose
publications are frequently referred to.
While thus cultivating the larger fields, the Association
adhered to its routine of quarterly meetings. Even during
the dark years of the Civil War they did not suffer a single
break, but much attention was then paid to military statis-
tics, army hospitals, sanitation and similar subjects. The
president, Dr. Jarvis, and several other members did notable
service in sanitation work. At this period a new and simple
constitution was adopted and the by-laws were reduced from
thirty three to eight articles. The range of topics upon
which addresses were read broadened in several directions.
Statistics of commerce, finance, agriculture, taxation, shared
attention with those of population, immigration, mortahty,
etc. Occasionally consideration was given to statistical
method. One matter upon which the Association declared
itself deserves special mention. In 1868 the Association
received an elaborate report on the metrical system of weights
and measures, prepared by two of its members, and not only
went on record as favoring its adoption by the people of the
United States but voted to petition Congress on the subject
and to ask the legislature to pass a statute requiring the
10 MEMORIAL VOLUME
metrical system to be taught in the public schools. The
action seems to have attracted much attention at the time.
The many-sided activities of the Association in the early
periods of its life is the more surprising when one considers
the limited membership. Until a time easily within our
memory, little effort was made to get new members. Per-
haps one reason for this was that a large constituency was
not needed since little was pubKshed. The founding of a
statistical journal was frequently discussed, but not even
preliminary steps were taken. In 1869 the second volume
of the collections was ordered printed — ^twenty two years
after the first. Unfortunately, many delays occurred; and
in 1873 President Jarvis reported that a part of the printed
pages of this second volume, which had not been bound,
were destroyed in the great Boston fire.
A question that on many occasions agitated the Associa-
tion and probably gave rise to long discussions was that of
the library. It had grown apace through "donations," Dr.
Jarvis alone having during his lifetime given it more than
600 volumes. Dr. George C. Shattuck had been another
constant benefactor also through contributions of money.
How to house a collection which in 1875 numbered about
2,500 volumes had long been a perplexity. Later on it
received large accessions, and as the Association had no
rooms of its own, the difficulty grew. Finally it was trans-
ferred to the building of the Institute of Technology and in
1899 found its permanent resting place in the Boston Public
Library. Before that time it was officially designated as the
"Jarvis Statistical Library."
Before sketching the last twenty five years of the history
of the Association, let me dwell for a moment on the person-
ality of some of its early leaders. The brunt of work during
the first years fell to Joseph B. Felt, long the recording
secretary. The first president, the Hon. Richard Fletcher,
seems to have been little more than an amiable figurehead.
Mr. Felt appears to have possessed much curious learning
with a decided bent for historical research. He was an
AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 11
indefatigable worker and contributed more than his share of
essays. Of Lemuel Shattuck, another of the founders, we
already know that he has been characterized as an eminent
statistician. He deserved the name. His census of Boston
is a remarkable piece of work, and the sanitary survey of
Massachusetts prepared under his direction is a classic. He
was not a frequent essayist, but gave unstinted service in a
larger way. The other Shattuck, Dr. George C, president
from 1846 to 1852, merits a warm tribute for his long and
unflagging devotion to the Association. During life he gave
liberally to it and he remembered it in his will.
He was followed by Dr. Edward Jarvis, for thirty one years
president, who stands out as the most remarkable figure
among his contemporaries in the Association. I can do no
better than to quote from the resolution adopted at his
retirement as president. The Association then recorded the
"Earnest expression of the manifold service he has rendered
the Association by the able manner in which he has per-
formed the duties of his oflice, by the ability with which he
has represented the society at home and abroad, by the
many valuable papers he has prepxred for us and read at
our meetings, and by the assiduous and unwearied zeal with
which he has labored at all times and in all ways for the
advancement of the interests of the Association and of
statistical knowledge."
It may truly be said that no human interest was foreign
to Dr. Jarvis. In his speeches and writings on statistical
subjects he traversed the widest fields and illunainated many
an unexplored corner. His chief interest lay, however, in
vital statistics, for the improvement of which he labored
unceasingly. For thirty one years he carried the heaviest
load for the Association. It is on record that during this
time he prepared more than thirty five papers and addresses
for the meetings. Upon his retirement in 1882 the Associa-
tion paid him the greatest tribute that lay within its gift by
making him president emeritus.
Another remarkable figure was that of S. B. Eliott, who
12 MEMORIAL VOLUME
s described in our records as an "insurance actuary and
calculator," of "accurate discipline, mathematical learning
and laborious industry." He later became attached to the
United States Treasury Department. At the request of the
Prussian government he constructed the first life table for
that country (published in the proceedings of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Albany, 1856).
He later constructed a second life table for the same govern-
ment. He made a number of studies of comparative mortal-
ity for different coimtries which led him to the conclusion
(in 1858) that "the mortality of the United States is such
as to make us dependent on immigration for permanent in-
crease."
Among men of the early days who deserve to be singled
out for special tribute for their services are these: Hon.
Amasa Walker (the father of Francis A.), for fifteen years
a vice-president and frequent essayist; Joseph E. Worcester,
foreign and corresponding secretary for twenty six years;
John Ward Dean, in recognition of whose long service as
recording secretary he was made a life member; J. Wingate
Thornton, another recording secretary and contributor of
statistical papers.
In the third decade of Dr. Jarvis' administration, two
strong men became members who have left a lasting mark
upon the Association. First came Carroll D. Wright, who
had taken charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a
little later Francis A. Walker, then professor at Yale Univer-
sity. Both brought new interests to the Association and
gave added impetus to the efforts for improving the statis-
tical service, both local and national. Among the honorary
members elected at this time, the name of Florence Nightin-
gale stands out. In acknowledgment she remembered the
Association with some sanitary reports for India and a pam-
phlet of her own authorship (Life or Death in India).
With the presidency of Francis A. Walker began a period
distinguished, among other things, for the accession to mem-
bership of many university teachers who as a class had
AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 13
hitherto shown little interest in the Association. No d :ubt
Walker himself proved a powerful magnet to the acade-
micians, and the need of teaching statistics had begun to be
recognized. But the great event in President Walker's
administration was the founding of the so-called new series
of our publications in 1888. It is strange that our records
should remain silent about so momentous an undertaking —
our chief permanent contribution to statistics and the lasting
memorial of the activities of our Association. The new
venture demanded the support of a larger membership and
it was sought; the response was immediate. Soon the Asso-
ciation had expanded from a local to a national group. In a
few years (1895) it counted more than five hundred members,
high-water mark for that time being reached a little later.
The heavy work in those days fell to Dr. Davis R. Dewey,
for twelve years recording secretary and editor of the publica-
tions, to whom the Association owes an unforgettable debt
of gratitude for eflficient and imgrudging service. As if to
emphasize the larger life upon which the Association had
entered, it was decided to have quarterly meetings at
Washington, and one was held there in 1896.
Of the general activities of the Association under President
Walker's eminent and devoted leadership, the printed vol-
umes aflford testimony I need not supplement. Upon his
death in 1897, Carroll D. Wright, who had served as vice-
president, recording secretary and librarian, lent the prestige
of his rare personality and achievements as statistician to
the oflBce of president. Under him the Association con-
tinued to flourish for some years. Later some lean times
set in, a period of temporary retrogression that seems un-
avoidable in the history of every organization. Membership
declined and the meetings dwindled to an annual meagerly
attended affair. Some of us here remember well those days
of disheartenment. The reaction did not last long; and,
happily, Colonel Wright lived to see the Association once
more in the ascendancy and entering upon new and better
days. In his last address to us (1908), he painted large
14 MEMORUL VOLUME
the spreading field of usefulness waiting to be occupied by
the Association, confident in its strength and loyalty to
high ideals.
Let others record the most recent history of the Associa-
tion. Only this may I venture to say: None of its days
have been richer in promise than the present. We are
vigorous in membership and lack not for interest. Never
has opportunity for intelhgent eflfort been greater. The
statistical world about us is immense and widening; but not
altogether well-ordered. There is constructive work to do
before the statistical service, national as well as local, can
reach the plane to which it belongs. There are standards to
be set and to maintain. If there are among us a multitude
of indiscriminate consumers of statistics, it must be that
there are too many indiscriminate producers. Is it not a
part of our mission to apply a remedy against the prevalent
statistical myopia which prevents a view of a wide horizon,
and against the no less common statistical astigmatism, the
victims of which see things, to be sure, but not always in
their true relations? Perhaps statistics will always remain
the plaything of some immature minds, and be used by others
as a convenient spring-board from which to jump at fallacious
conclusions. But if the past carries any assurance of the
future, may we not look forward to a time when the profes-
sion of statistics shall have come fully into its own", and
when it will be recognized that the instrument at its hands
has but the supreme purpose of searching for and diffusing
human knowledge?
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS IN
STATISTICS:
THE OUTLOOK FOK THE FUTURE
Bt S. N. D. North, LL.D.
Assistant Secretary and Statistician of the Carnegie Endoivmentfor International Peace
Seventy fifth Anniversary ot the American Statistical Association, February 13, 1914
The life of man upon the globe has been divided into
various periods, which differ according to the point of view
of the historian. The simplest division establishes three
epochs: ancient, mediaeval and modern. The intellectual
advance of mankind has been divided by Auguste Comte
into three successive stages: the theological, the metaphysical
and the positive, or scientific. Economists and historians
make other classifications, the most common being that
which separates modern history into its several industrial
stages, the feudal period, the guild period, the period of
household industry, and the period of factory industry, the
latter having its beginning with the substitution of steam
for the labor of the human hand. The socialist now de-
mands that we close the factory period and enter a new one
which, whatever the name assigned to it by future econo-
mists, shall be a non-competitive age.
Another division of the centuries since the Middle Ages
is possible, and more satisfactory for the purposes of this
paper. Let us divide them into two periods, the non-statis-
tical and the statistical; one the period of superstition, the
other the period of ascertained facts expressed in numerical
terms. The terms are essentially synonymous with those
which divide modern history into the non-scientific or theo-
logical period, and the positive or scientific period.
The science of statistics is the chief instrumentality through
which the progress of civilization is now measured, and by
which its development hereafter will be largely controlled.
16 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Until this science was evolved, history was little more
than tradition transcribed; myths reduced to records; narra-
tives of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall of dynasties,
of the achievements of warriors, emperors, king makers; of
the machinations of priests and ecclesiastical potentates; of
the selfishness and brutality of mankind.
Archaeologists dig up the ruined cities of the past, unearth
vast catacombs, rebuild great temples, decipher hiero-
glyphics, and so reconstruct for us the social, political and in-
dustrial fabrics of ages dead and gone. Other investigators,
interested in a later period, overhaul musty church records,
and translate ancient mimicipal archives, in an eager and
profitable search after systematic knowledge of the customs
and conditions of life during long centuries when ignorance
and superstition were the dominating characteristics of
the peoples then called civilized, in contrast with nomadic
barbarians. Gradually, painfully, uncertainly, modern
methods of investigation are reconstructing the history of
the world, and restoring to it the human element, which the
ancient chroniclers left out; they are establishing the reign of
law in the social actions of men, by knowledge of which we
can look behind and beyond the accidental and temporary,
and comprehend the grand forces by which human affairs
are governed.
The black letter learning of the law no longer suffices, and
the whole science and theory of government are changing.
The age of invertebrates passed successively into that of
fishes, reptiles, mammals and man. Similarly, society
emerged from one stage into another, barbaric, communistic
and competitive by turns. It is constantly in a state of flux;
it is never stationary anywhere, although never equally
mobile at all points. It is ever taking on new aspects, ever
overcoming old points of resistance and pushing in new direc-
tions, obedient to some irresistible law — ^but a law we have
not yet been able to comprehend or define, except in most
general terms.
The irregularities and eccentricities of human evolution
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 17
puzzle US, and often confound our theories. We find all
stages of civilization simultaneously existing in the four
quarters of the globe. "Darkest Africa" swarms about
geographical centers where ancient civilization reached its
climax 3,000 years ago; the vast empire of Russia is con-
vulsed by problems which western Europe long since settled;
China, with nearly one sixth of the total population of the
globe, is just shaking oflf the torpidity of unnumbered and
unprogressive centuries. The riddle of the ages is the rela-
tive backwardness of civilization in geographical sections
contiguous to the points of its greatest progress. When
every allowance has been made for the superiority of certain
races and ethnic types under exceptional conditions, and
for the submersion of others under the incursions of nomadic
barbarians, the riddle remains unsolved. The encouraging
fact is, that what we may call the humanizing movement is
everywhere in evidence today, however widely different the
conditions. Never since life began on this globe, was the
development of the whole human race so interesting, so
important, so absorbing.
Moreover, we have learned at last that in the shifting tides
of human change, we confront the supremest problems of
our race. Here are the mingled influences of past ages, the
effect of the rise and fall of empires; here are actually in prog-
ress the growth and the decay of living nations.
As of old Saint John beheld from the Isle of Patmos the
splendors of the Revelation, partly understood and partly
beyond human knowledge, so in our time the progress of
the age has brought us to a vision wider than ever before —
a vision of the vast field of human endeavor.
How shall we interpret these signs and wonders? It is
to the modem science of statistics we must turn. Here is a
new factor in human affairs, at once illuminating, helpful
and inspiring, which shall show us the meaning of some at
least of the momentous racial and national changes now in
progress.
Within a short period of time, this new science of statistics
18 MEMORIAL VOLUME
has been so effectively organized as to afford a surer horo-
scope of the future than any agency that has heretofore
existed. It does not enable us to read the future by the past
— ^that is an omniscient power which will never come to
finite man. It does enable us to determine, with scientific
precision, the directions in which certain sociological, eco-
nomic and industrial currents are moving in this twentieth
century; the rapidity of the movement; and the influence
of one ciu-rent upon another. It has established the fact
that in spite of all individual variations, the average or typi-
cal conduct of men operates with a high degree of regularity.
The modern science of statistics is based upon this ascer-
tained law. No other scientific discovery is more important.
The natural sciences deal with matters not of man's mak-
ing, and over which he can exercise few modifying influences.
But in the broad field of statistics we deal with a mixed class
of facts, brought about only in part by nature herself, and
largely determined by change of custom, fixed habit, freak
of fortune, local environment, constitutional reform, and
numerous conditions which it is within the power of man
to modify and control.
It is not possible to exaggerate the gains which have come
to mankind by the marvelous achievements of the ma,sters
of the physical sciences. They have given us the use of
steam and electricity, and have penetrated the mysterious
possibilities of chemistry. Thus they have revolutionized
industry and changed the economic bases of civihzation.
They have recast the relations of man to man, of nations to
nations; they have compelled the rewriting of the science of
pohtical economy, created new laws of supply and demand,
new relations of production and consumption; new methods
of barter and exchange; they have changed every aspect of
human existence; and they have enormously increased both
the complexities and the privileges of human life.
But all the sciences are dependent in ever-increasing degree
upon the science of statistics. All of them now recognize
it as the key — the "open sesame" — to further progress. As
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OP PROGRESS 19
Goethe said: "Statistics govern the world." In the last
analysis, this science is the chief instrumentality upon which
the world now depends, in its efforts to advance the move-
ment which is at ferment in every civilized land — ^which had
its origin in the rapid spread of democratic institutions; in
the education and elevation of the proletariat; in the asser-
tion of human rights, as against the rights of caste, of priv-
ilege, and of wealth.
II
It is from this point of view that ^e approach a review of
the progress of statistics in the tJflited States, during the
seventy five years since the Americah Statistical Association
was founded here in the city of Boston, in 1839.
At that time there was but one organization in existence,
so far as I am aware, with similar objects in view. This was
the London Statistical Society, now the Royal Statistical
Society, founded four years earlier. Its journal — ever since
maintaining its undisputed rank as the most valuable of
statistical serial publications — was then but one year old.*
Passing over the British Annual Register — ^most venerable
of all serial publications, now in its 155th year (founded
1758), and the Almanack de Gotha, now in its 151st year, and
useful to the diminishing proportion of people with pedigrees,
if not to statisticians — we note that the Statesman's Year
Book, indispensable compendium of international statistics,
is only fifty years old. The Statistical Abstract of Great
Britain has only been compiled for fifty nine years; and it
was the first in the field of all the similar annuals now pub-
lished by thirty odd nations. Our own Statistical Abstract,
the conception of a farseeing but modest statistician, Ed-
ward Young, was first started in 1878, and has gradually
developed to its present highly useful function. Whitaher's
Almanac is only forty six years old, and HazelVs only twenty
seven. The New York Tribune Almanac, pioneer in the
* The writer has since learned that the Manchester Statistical Society was or-
ganized in 1833 and has had a continuous existence.
20 MEMORIAL VOLUME
American field of political statistics, made its first appearance
in 1838. Other and younger almanacs, vastly extended in
scope, are now the best-thumbed volumes in countless public
and private libraries.
I record these facts and dates, because they demonstrate
the progress that has marked these seventy five years, in the
means for the popularization of the statistical method of
judging the progress of the world; and their success reveals
the craving the pubhc has and can gratify, for knowledge of
facts.
So great had been this progress, that in 1885, when the
London Society reached its fiftieth anniversary, it celebrated
the event by a jubilee meeting, at which were present expert
delegates from ten foreign countries, with Francis A. Walker
representing the United States, as president of this Society.
In the same year the Paris Statistical Society celebrated
its twenty fifth anniversary; and there were then in that
city, in Berlin, in Vienna, in Budapest and in most of the
European capitals, men then or since world-known for their
contributions to statistical science. Most of the govern-
ment statistical oflSces or commissions of Europe have been
organized since our Association was founded; and the move-
ment for the standardization of comparative international
statistics has been set on foot.
Someone has described statistics as "the anatomy of the
nation," meaning that they indicate and describe the bones
around and upon which, flesh, blood, muscles, nerves, vital
organs — ^aU that constitute the system — are brought together
in the national entity. All great subjects of modern legisla-
tion depend, for their intelligent handling, upon the accuracy
and completeness with which the facts have been statistically
developed. Our civilization has grown so complex, so sensi-
tive in its manifestations and reactions, that it woujd cease
to operate effectively, if it were deprived of accurate, sys-
tematic, statistical information of the ebb and flow of
commerce, of money, of expenditure, of indebtedness, of
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 21
crops, of markets, of production and consumption in all
lines of industry.
Hence it happens that every group of facts bearing upon
the daily life of a great nation is now statistically summarized
and daily utilized in business and in law making.
We in the United States need all the aid we can get from
statistics, need it more than any other people; for more than
any other, we are living in the period of change. Transforma-
tion in many of our methods is in progress. Industry passes,
by consolidation into great corporations, from the competi-
tive into the monopolistic form. The people are engaged in
a fierce struggle to regain from the politician the control and
management of the government, national, state and local.
And they are so far succeeding that subtle modifications of
the fundamentals of our institutions are in progress. In the
new edition of his American Commonwealth, Mr. Bryce
states that he found diflSculty in revising the work, because
so many of our political institutions are at present in so
transitory or experimental a state.*
The days of the laissez faire have gone forever. There is
no longer any field of human activity into which it is not
now accepted as both the right and the duty of the state to
intervene, by investigation and by remedial action. This
reversal of the long prevalent theory of the governmental
function has enormously widened the field of statistics; has
increased their use, and has made it necessary that the edu-
cated citizen, whatever his walk in life, shall be somewhat
trained in their uses and abuses, their methods and limita-
tions.
Within this period, statistics have become the foundation
of modern government, both in the administrative and the
legislative branches. There is no phase of the relations of
government to people which legislation does not now enter;
no problem with which it does not seek to deal; no innova-
tion from which it shrinks; no condition for which it has not
a panacea. It is only by the statistical search-light that we
* Preface, p. X.
22 MEMORIAL VOLUME
can determine the effects and defects of all this mass of new
legislation, covering so many strange and untried fields.
Thus the life of the Association covers the development of
statistics into an exact science, its application to all fields of
human activity, its utilization as the standard for the meas-
urement of human progress, and its acceptance as the test
of the trend and the tendencies of that progress.
Ill
While there has been marked progress in the development
of the oflScial and private statistical work of all civilized
countries, we may claim, and perhaps demonstrate, that it
has been greater in the United States in these seventy five
years, than in any other nation.
There are many reasons why this should have been so.
The progress of the nation itself has been greater than that
of any other. The growth of interest in statistics, and in
the results they establish, has kept pace with the develop-
ment of the country itself. Twenty five years ago Gen.
Francis A. Walker declared that "the American people are
intensely and passionately devoted to statistics." This pop-
ular interest has grown greatly since. Increasing interest is
due to increasing dependence; to the growing recognition of
the fact that in government, in business and in the aflFairs of
hfe, statistics alone can discharge the function of the steam
gauge in the engine. This recognition is largely traceable
to the exceptional skill and ingenuity with which American
statisticians have presented the results of their investiga-
tions.
We compile a greater volume of statistical material, and
cover a greater variety of topics, than any other country.
Indeed, there is practically no field of inquiry into which our
ambitious statisticians dare not enter — often with results
which will not stand the test of analysis.
We have, first, the steadily increasing statistical product
of the national government, covering wider and more diver-
sified fields each year. We have, second, the statistical
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OP PROGRESS 23
product of forty eight separate states — some of it good, some
of it distinctly bad, much of it of very uncertain value, but
all of it showing a tendency towards improvement. We have,
third, the product due to private initiative, yearly growing
more exact in methods, more informing in results. We spend
more money than any other nation in compiling statistics,
and beyond question we waste much of the expenditure.
To this country, however, belongs the unique distinction of
having inaugurated the decennial census of national popula-
tion and resources. Indeed, this most signal service of the
nation to the science of statistics long preceded the founding
of this Association. And so it happens that the United
States alone among nations possesses a complete comparative
record of population, from the date when the independent
nation was born. There is no country on the globe, the
growth and diflfusion of whose population, and all its inci-
dence from the beginning, has been or ever can be depicted
with the photographic detail and the scientific philosophy,
of William S. Rossiter's Century of Population Growth, pub-
lished by the Permanent Census OflSce in 1909. This volume
demonstrates better than any publication I know of, one
contention of this paper, that statistics are the surest founda-
tion for history.
It may also be said that the Negro Bulletin, prepared by
Prof. Walter F. Willcox — another of the Permanent Census
Office studies^s an ethnological and sociological adventure
in the field of intensive statistical work, which finds no equal
in other countries. I make this statement with knowledge
of the extraordinary success of Great Britain in photograph-
ing the status of the varied tribes and clans of her trouble-
some empire of India. The negro problem is one of our many
exigent problems; this bulletin illumines it.
The census of the populatibn was ordained by the Con-
stitution, to be taken in 1790, and every tenth year there-
after, so long as the nation shall endure. No other reason
than the necessity for a basis for Congressional reapportion-
ment was assigned for the census. But it quickly dawned
24 MEMORIAL VOLUME
upon the f arsighted statesmen of that era that this was but
one of many useful purposes this decennial stock-taking
might be made to serve. With successive decades, new lines
of enumeration were added — agriculture in 1820, manu-
factures in 1840, other inquiries at following decades, until
the census became the periodical inventory of the national
resources, and the barometer of national development in
every phase and branch, in human beings first, for the
quality and character of its citizenship must always remain
the most important national asset; after that in the measure-
ment and the differentiation of progress in every field where
human energy contributes to the building of the nation.
Thus the American census has become as essential, for
definite knowledge of our national assets and liabilities, as
the periodical book-balancing of a business corporation in
determining its solvency.
As showing the relationship of the census to the whole
problem of modern government, the United States no sooner
obtained a temporary responsibility in Cuba, than it ordered
an enumeration of the people; and the first steps taken to
reestablish civil government in the colonial possessions ac-
quired by the war with Spain were the censuses of Porto
Rico and the Philippine Islands.
To this day we remain the only nation in the world which
has grasped the possibilities and the advantages of enumera-
tion by the census method. Germany has followed our
example in adding agricultural statistics to the population
count, and, within a limited scope, industrial statistics as
well. So have Belgium and Holland, and France to some
extent. Other nations have similar enlargement of census
work under consideration. But it remains the fact that the
United States was the first to discover the possibilities of
the census; and that it has carried it farther, in more diver-
sified fields of inquiry, and in elaboration of detail, than any
other coiuitry.
This development has come since the founding of this
Association, and may be largely attributed to its inspiration.
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 25
It had its real impetus in the Tenth Census, that of 1880,
when Francis A. Walker, after a training as superintendent
of the Ninth, conceived the idea of making the Centennial
Census a national inventory, such as had never before been
dreamed of. That census remains unique, here and every-
where; and it stamps Francis A. Walker, the fourth Presi-
dent of this Association,* twelve times reelected, as the king
among census takers, and the greatest all-round master of
the science of statistics.
In 1890 came another innovation in census work which, in
its immediate results and its ultimate possibilities, may be
described as epoch-making in statistics — the introduction of
automatic tabulation. All honor is due to Robert P. Porter,
director of the Eleventh Census, who had the courage and
the foresight to try this hazardous experiment, with full
realization of its possibilities. f
I cannot detain the reader with a statement of the cor-
relation of the data of individual elements of the popula-
tion, in combination with other data, beyond the reach of
hand tabulation, which this invention opened up. The
sociological value of the minuter statistical presentation of
demographic data thus brought within reach, is not yet fully
understood and only partially realized. Without it we could
never hope to lay bare all the truth we must have, if we are
to cope successfully with the problems growing out of the
* In the first seventy one years of its existence, the American Statistical Associa-
tion had but five presidents, each of whom served until his death. Hon. Richard
Fletcher, the first, served six years; Dr. George C. Shattuck, the second, five years;
Dr. Edward Jarvis, the third, thirty years; Gen. Francis A. Walker, the fourth,
thirteen years; and Col. Carroll D. Wright, the fifth president, twelve years. The
presidents since 1909 have been S. N. D. North, Frederick L. Hoffman, Walter F.
Willcox, and John Koren.
t The automatic tabulating machinery was introduced and successfully operated
in the 1911 census of Great Britain and the Dominion of Canada. Austria and
Russia have long made use of it. Dr. Herman Hollerith of Washington conceived
and invented this ingenious mechanism, which has since been successfully applied
in many branches of business accounting. The Thirteenth Census was tabulated
by use of an independent system of punching and recording machines, owned by the
government and developed during my administration as Director.
26 MEMORIAL VOLUME
heterogeneous commingling of races which our defective
immigration laws are forcing upon us.
No other country has yet realized the possibilities of this
advance in census methods; this is perhaps because no other
country has quite the same need for these data. But until
other nations obtain and publish such, the population sta-
tistics of the United States must be regarded as the most
complete and eflfective in the world.
It remained for the Twelfth Census, that of 1900, to reach
the high-water mark in two other fields which the census
method alone can adequately handle — the fields of agricul-
ture and manufacture. These are the right and left legs
upon which our people stand and walk; upon their growth
and prosperity depends our future. The Census of Agricul-
ture was so handled as to be accepted as an adequate por-
trayal of our agricultural status and resources. It was
recognized as so vital a horoscope upon our ability to feed
our coming miUions, that Congress ordained that it shall
hereafter be taken every five years. Supremacy in agricul-
tural statistics is conceded to the greatest of agricultural
nations.
The United States was the first nation to undertake the
census statistics of manufactures; and in 1900 the report
reached a completeness of detail and a technical perfection
of method that- left little to be desired. No other country
has ever approached it; and it was only in 1908 that England
began to imitate it.
I dwell upon these facts, because they are tangible evidence
of the actual contribution of the United States to statistics
during the period under review, and justify the claim that
nothing quite so distinctive has been contributed elsewhere.
They demonstrate our courage in venturing into untried
fields of investigation, and our ability to cope with statistical
difficulties hitherto deemed insuperable.
The most important single step for the advancement of
statistical science in the United States, after the decennial
census, was the establishment of the Permanent Census
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 27
Office, on March 6, 1902. It was the goal towards which
American statisticians had aimed for a quarter of a century.
The chief credit for its final achievement must in justice be
assigned to William R. Merriam, the Director of the Twelfth
Census, who concentrated energy, executive ability, and per-
sonal and official popularity upon the procurement of this
crowning achievement as Director.
Prior to that time, the census office was disbanded at the
end of each decennial period; its trained men turned loose;
its valuable records scattered and lost; its traditions oblit-
erated; and continuity of method and experience destroyed.
It was necessary to grope in the dark at each recurring census,
testing out methods already tried and discarded, repeating
errors and mistakes already demonstrated. It was an in-
tolerable situation, from the point of view of scientific work
and progressive development. As the country grows, it
would soon have become an impossible one. The gigantic
task of a decennial enumeration would have broken down
at the beginning.
The work of the Permanent Census Office during the first
intercensal period completely justified its establishment. It
successfully inaugurated the system of voluntary coopera-
tion with state, county and city offices and private organiza-
tions, which is vital to the coordination of statistics in the
United States. Whether or not its estabhshment was fur-
ther vindicated by the results of the Thirteenth Census, is
now challenged.
It is too early, however, to attempt final judgment. The
Permanent Office was perfectly organized for the task, and
no census was ever before taken in this country under more
favorable conditions. Starting with such an advantage, it
cost an excessive sum, and was not completed within the
time limit fixed by the law. Its scheme for separately com-
bining the main details of census inquiry in a single com-
pact volume for each state, was an admirable innovation.
Whether the changes in schedule phraseology, and the radical
recastings of tabular presentation, were wise, is at least
28 MEMORIAL VOLUME
doubtful; for one of the chief values of a periodical census is
the principle of perfect comparability from census to census.
The improvement of each census over its predecessor is
possible and desirable; but changes which invalidate exact
comparison, in the measurement of growth and of variation,
may strip a census of its chief value, from the scientific point
of view. The accuracy of some of the Thirteenth Census
figures has been sharply questioned. It may be that another
census must be taken, before these controversies can be
definitely determined. Independently of all this, the advo-
cates of a permanent bureau, among whom I have been
actively enrolled since 1880, are in no respect dismayed, nor
is our faith in the inestimable value of the Permanent Census
Office in the least degree shaken, provided only and always,
that the office is officered by men thoroughly trained and
equipped for this gigantic task.
Other government bureaus have continually enlarged and
improved their statistical product. The statistics of rail-
road transportation, skillfully organized by Prof. Henry
C. Adams for the Interstate Commerce Commission, are
nowhere surpassed in their wealth of searching and inform-
ing detail.
The condition and transactions of our banking institutions
are presented by the Comptroller of the Currency in illumi-
nating tables, which some nations may equal, but none
surpass.
The statistics of world production of the precious metals,
compiled by Director George E. Roberts for the Bureau
of the Mint, have long been accepted as standard by
great nations whose financial systems are far superior to
our own.
The Internal Revenue Bureau tells us, each year, the exact
production of wines, beers and spirituous liquors; and meas-
uring consumption by that standard, we are amazed to dis-
cover that notwithstanding the rapid spread of prohibitory
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OP PROGRESS 29
laws in the Southern States, the American people drink more
alcohol than ever before.
The Immigration Bureau has learned, very recently, how
to compile the statistics of the mass of foreign-born humanity
pouring into our midst. We now understand how com-
pletely the character of this immigration has changed in
recent years, and are beginning to realize the dangers and
difficulties it involves.
The Year Book of Agriculture, published by the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, circulates a milhon copies annually
among our farmers, and contains the most complete statis-
tics of the production and international exchange of farm
products, of which I am aware.
The tables of our foreign commerce, exports and imports,
are given with a detail nowhere more complete, in the
monthly summaries of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic
Commerce.
Until recently, the United States was strikingly behind the
chief European nations in the study of municipal statistics,
the importance of which, in view of the abnormal growth of
our urban population, we are now beginning to reahze. It
was the existence of the Permanent Census Office which
made it possible to develop the splendid series of Annual
Municipal Statistics, which Dr. LeGrand Powers, with rare
statistical skill |and a fine devotion, has placed on a par
with any compiled iin Europe.
The art of presenting statistics in graphic form was in-
vented by European statisticians, and brought to a high
degree of perfection by Levasseur, Marshall, Latanne,
Soetbeer, Rawson, and others. Statistical Atlases, or
albums, were compiled in several countries before our first
publication of this character at the Census of 1870. But it
is an American statistician. Dr. Henry Gannett, who has
made the widest and most eflFective application of the graphic
form to census figures. By his ingenuity in visualizing re-
sults in many combinations, and the use of the largest vari-
ety of symbols, he has brought statistics within the ready
30 MEMORIAL VOLUME
understanding of the people, and enormously increased
their usefulness. The Statistical Atlases of the Eleventh
and Twelfth Censuses were magnificent contributions of
the graphic method to statistical science.
It is cause of profound regret that the Statistical Atlas
was omitted from the publications of the Thirteenth Census.
Of the long series of census volumes, the Atlas is perhaps
the most widely useful for educational purposes. The re-
production of its graphic representations of growth, by lan-
tern slides, in university lecture courses and in popular
addresses, has done more to popularize and make compre-
hensible census results, than any other method. I hope
that this mistake will never again be made.*
As universally useful and acceptable was the octavo
volume, Abstract of the Census, originated in 1840, which
compressed into the minimum of space, without text dis-
cussion, those bare general results of the decennial censuses
which are in daily demand in countless business oflSces, and
literary and scientific laboratories, in the form most conven-
ient for quick and ready reference.
Vital statistics are the foundation upon which rests the
modern, humanitarian, scientific movement for the develop-
ment and application of the laws of public health and sani-
tation. Only by the perfection of our records of births and
deaths, can the devoted men and women whose lives are
consecrated to this great movement, guide and systematize
their work.
The world acknowledges with undying gratitude the !», -
spired genius with which Dr. William Farr, of England,
organized this work of registration, beginning in 1837, two
years before the organization of this Association. Under
his hands, the great problems to which vital statistics are
* The history, the uses, the methods, and the limitations of the graphic method in
statistics, are admirably presented in the paper of the late Emile Levasseur, member
of the Latemational Statistical Institute, in the proceedings of the Jubilee meeting
of the London Statistical Society, 1885. Other papers on the same subject by
Alfred Marshall and Francis Galton appear in the volume.
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 31
the key and clew, were converted into scientific truths, and
the general principles established which determine the rela-
tionship of density of population and hygienic conditions,
to disease and death. Dr. Farr was the pioneer in the pro-
tection of the people against a thousand insidious sources of
infection. He first showed, by the statistical method, the
relation of cause and effect. He organized the British
"Annual Reports of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths
and Marriages," — a splendid and unrivalled series of demo-
graphic statistics, to which may be traced the beginning of
scientific sanitation.
The United States ofiFers opportunity for the development
of a series of reports on vital statistics of universal useful-
ness. We present the most unique ethnological problem
anywhere in existence. Our population is an admixture,
and to some extent an amalgamation, of races and nation-
alities elsewhere unknown. It subsists under every variety
of climate and topography; it is sustained, in one section or
another, by every gift of nature. The occupations of our
people are practically all-inclusive, presenting unequalled
advantages for the study of occupation in its relations to
morbidity and mortahty.
In the face of these facts, it is humiliating to know that
in vital statistics the United States stands at the foot of the
nations of like rank in civilization. But it is encouraging to
be able to add that we are making progress, and timely to
point out ways in which this progress can be accelerated.
The science of demography, as we understand that word —
of comparatively recent use in connection with statistical
science — includes all statistics which record and measure the
acts, the movements and the lives of mankind. It is im-
possible to draw a hard and fast line, at which statistics can
be said to cease to be demographic in their character.
Common usage regards demography as a branch of ethnol-
ogy, anthropology being the other branch. It treats of
the statistics of health and disease, of the physical, intel-
lectual, physiological and economic aspects of births, deaths,
32 MEMORIAL VOLUME
marriages and divorces; of the insane, criminal, defective
and dependent classes, of emigration and immigration; of
mankind, in every aspect of his development which a census
of population can reveal. All of these statistics are essential
to the proper study of public hygiene and the general social
uplift — two things indissolubly bound together.
The associated efforts of mankind to promote sanitary
reform, to improve housing conditions, to protect food sup-
plies, to improve the conditions under which human beings
herd together, have for their object the prolongation of
human life, the lessening of human suffering, and the in-
crease of human happiness. Hygiene is the most potent of
the instrumentalities through which the sociologist can
accomplish practical results. Both the hygienist and the
sociologist must build their efforts upon the work of the
demographist, if they would build effectively, and without
misdirected effort.
The diflficulties which surround the development of our
vital statistics long appeared insuperable. With no federal
control over state and municipal mortality records; with
forty eight separate and independent commonwealths in
charge of the public health; with no standardization of
methods between them, and with total indifference on the
part of the officials in most of them, it seemed, thirty years
ago, a hopeless task even to attempt a reform.
It is only one of many anomalies and inconsistencies which
grow out of our dual form of government; anomalies which
make a marriage which is legal in one state illegal in another;
which make a misdemeanor in one a crime in another; which
bring chaos into our jurisprudence, and produce endless un-
certainty in our business of an inter-state character.
In some of the older states, Massachusetts and Rhode
Island for example, the mortality records have been admir-
ably kept for many years. High praise must be awarded
men like the late Dr. Samuel W. Abbott of the former, and
Dr. Charles V. Chapin, superintendent of health in Provi-
dence, for devoted and scientific service rendered the cause
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 33
of vital statistics. There are today in several states, regis-
trars and health officers who should be named in the same
class. But in too many instances it is still a record of official
indifference.
We owe it to the late Dr. John S. Billings that a way was
discovered to overcome these difficulties. We owe it to the
late William A. "King that this road was pursued to prac-
tical results. We owe it to the tireless enthusiasm of Dr.
Cressy L. Wilbur, that at length we see daylight shining at
the end of the long, dark tunnel of confusion, contradiction
and imcertainty, through which we have been wandering
all these years. But to this day we are lacking in statistics
of births, except perhaps in three states, which are of the
least value.
When the registration area, comprising states and cities in
which the record of deaths was fairly complete, was first
estabhshed by Doctor Billings in 1880, it consisted of but
two states (Massachusetts and New Jersey), and a few
outside cities, with an aggregate population of 8,538,366, —
about 17 per cent, of the total population. Today it includes
twenty four states, and forty two cities in other states, a
population of 63,350,000, or 65.2 per. cent, of the popula-
tion of the United States.
It is difficult to appreciate the signfficance of these figures,
to magnify their importance, or to give due credit for the de-
votion and the scientific skill which have inspired the little
band who are determined that their country shall not fail, as
time passes, to make its proper contribution to international
demography; who understand that no other country can
make a contribution of equal importance, under conditions
so unique, and that no other country stands in quite such
exigent need for just this knowledge, at just this time.
Vital statistics have made greater progress, in the last ten
years, than in all the preceding years of our history. The
annual reports have become, for the first time, scientific
statistics, comparable, so far as they go, with each other, and
with those of other countries. So much progress was made.
34 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and the outlook for the future was so promising, that I felt
justified, when the Thirteenth Census legislation was pend-
ing, in making the recommendation that the mortality
schedule be omitted from that census, for the first time since
its introduction in 1850. That recommendation was ac-
cepted, without protest or objection from any quarter; so
that now, as Wilbur puts it, "we have thrown away our
crutches, and if we cannot walk, we must fall." But the
child never learns to walk until he tries, and tries many
times.
To complete the service which the government of the
United States still owes to itself, to the people of the whole
country, and to the health authorities of the states and the
municipalities, one other great step forward is necessary, as
the proper supplement to the establishment of the Per-
manent Census Office. That step is a quinquennial or five-
year census of population. The five-year Census of Man-
ufactures was ordained when the Permanent Census Office
was created. The five-year Census of Agriculture was
established by the act for the Thirteenth Census. Both
are admirable and necessary; but the need for neither is
quite so great as for a more frequent count of our growing,
shifting, composite people. The knowledge of the progress
and condition of the people is certainly not less important
than the measurement of industrial growth. The five-year
population census, such as is now taken by France and
Germany, is one of the great forward steps in the movement
for social progress. To secure this advance, the American
Statistical Association should take a leading part.
Closely connected with vital statistics, is the statistical
study of the defective, delinquent and criminal classes, in
which field our president stands facile princeps. This is an-
other development since this Association was founded; the
first attempt of the federal government to gather the statis-
tics of these classes in institutions was in 1870. Much
progress has been made; much remains to be made. It is a
study as essential as that of vital statistics to the well being
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 35
of the human race. We have recently come to realize its
importance, in the awakening of scientists to the fact that
there is a science called eugenics, and the relationship which
this science bears to human progress and sociological ad-
vance. The need for restraining the genetically deficient
classes and families from the function of reproduction, is
recognized as imperative; the methods whereby this can be
done are but dimly outlined; the problem on its face seems
insoluble. But able men are not afraid to face it. If we
can breed plants and animals, increasing beauty, develop-
ing useful qualities and eliminating defects, why not men and
women as well? The work of the Eugenics Record oflBice at
Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island, organized by Dr. C.
B. Davenport for research in human heredity and its
application to human affairs, is making gratifying progress,
and finds the statistical method its most effective instru-
mentality.
The statistical work of our government, carried on in
these numerous bureaus, compares favorably, in all branches,
with that of other countries; but it still lacks, very conspic-
uously, the coordination, the scientific homogeneity we may
call it, so admirably attained in Germany since the estab-
lishment of the Imperial Statistical OflSce in 1872, and in
Great Britain, since the control of all official governmental
statistics was concentrated in the Board of Trade. Some
day, a wise president will realize how greatly the value and
vaUdity of our official statistical work are impaired by this
lack of concentration under the direction of a cabinet officer,
who is the best trained expert the country can produce.
Then we shall be in a way to do our full duty to the science
which has become the basis of enhghtened government.
It is an ideal towards which American statisticians should
persistently aim, and for the attainment of which this
Association may well take the initiative.
36 MEMORIAL VOLUME
IV
Turning to private statistical work, the record of progress
and development is equally encouraging. Our privately
gathered statistics have come to bear a relation to govern-
ment as important as any compiled by the government itself.
One of the first practical applications of the statistical
method was to commerce. When Lord Timothy Dexter
made his famous shipment of warming pans to the West
Indies, he furnished a ludicrous ^lustration of the plight of
the man who ships articles to markets which have no con-
ceivable use for them. Originally commerce was somewhat
like the trip of a tramp steamer in semi-civilized waters,
sailing from port to port, picking up what it happens to find,
and selUng what it happens to have.
Commercial statistics have revolutionized this primitive
commerce. They are compiled with such fullness and accu-
racy that the statistical situation of every great staple is
known when the day's business begins, throughout the
world. New York and New Orleans know every morning
just how many bales of cotton have come in sight, the world
over, on the previous day; and a single quotation is the basis
of every man's transactions in the bourses and exchanges of
every coimtry on every continent. The whole of the world's
commerce in great staples, representing thirty billions of
exchanges annually, is now adjusted with precision, and
regulated to a nicety, by the statistical barometer that
controls and determines it. A glut here, and a famine
there, formerly chronic conditions, now follow only when
nature fails or surprises, and rarely even then.
The estabUshment of the International Institute of Agri-
culture, at Rome, which has successfully worked out a plan
for securing the yearly product of the great agricultural
staples in all the great producing countries, was the inspira-
tion of that American genius, David Lubin.
The whole science of modem insurance is founded upon
statistics. An accumulation of data recording actual experi-
ence in a mass of selected cases, enables the insurance actuary
SEVENTY FIVE YEAKS OF PROGRESS 37
to calculate with a certainty that approaches the miraculous,
the average longevity of the insured, and to determine within
a fraction of a fraction, the average relation of each individual
premium to the total outgo of his company.
Mr. Hoffman's admirable study, Fifty Years of American
Life Insurance* shows that the number of policies in ordinary
life insurance has increased from 56,046 in 1860 to 6,954,119
in 1910, and the amount of insurance from $163,703,455 to
$13,227,213,168. Industrial insurance has grown from $145,-
938,241 in 1885 to $3,177,047,874 in 1910. These figures
are impressive as an indication of the extraordinary pros-
perity of our country, and quite as significant as evidence
of the scientific exactness with which this growth can be
measured. Actuarial statistics constitute a special science
by themselves, which hardly existed seventy five years ago,
and is today the cornerstone of this beneficent business,
which "tends persistently to raise the level of social well
being of every element of the population."
The annual reports of our leading Chambers of Commerce,
Boards of Trade, and organizations representing great indus-
tries, have become as trustworthy as those which bear the
hallmark of the government. The New York Chamber of
Commerce, for a period of nearly eighty years, has statis-
tically photographed the annual development of the metrop-
olis in every great line of commercial activity. So also of
the similar reports of Boston, Chicago, and other cities.
The annual reports of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange
are accepted throughout the world as a complete exposition
of the production, movement and consumption of the great
textile staple. Those of the American Iron and Steel Asso-
ciation record the production and the prices of the basic
forms of that metal with minute detail. The Spectator
Company of New York supplies periodical statistics regard-
ing the income, losses, and dividends of the Fire, Marine and
Casualty Companies. The Street Railway Journal compiles
* Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, September, 1911,
New Series, No. 95.
S8 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the mileage, car equipment and capitalization of these
transportation companies. Poor's Railway Manual has
occupied for many years an enviable position as the reposi-
tory of all the available statistical information regarding
the steam roads. In recent years Moody's Manual has
reached a similar eminence as the standard authority upon
the finances and operations of industrial corporations.
Trade joiu-nals exist for all the great industries, in all the
manufactm-ing countries, which cover, with marvelous com-
pleteness, the statistical status of the industry with which
their readers are concerned. Daily newspapers flourish,
devoted chiefly to the statistics of commerce and trade, and
covering the transactions of bourses, exchanges, chambers
and marts in the uttermost corners of the globe. Thus is
the history of the world now written in figures, from day to
day, from year to year, from decade to decade.
I beg you to notice that in what I have enumerated in
tedious detail of the applications of statistics in modern
life, I have only grazed the surface. Statistics create an
endless procession of moving photographs of the work and
civilization of today.
These statistics are compiled because men use them, and
cannot inteUigently conduct their business without them.
They are the modern substitute for the rule of thumb. They
are the basis of the new rule of Publicity, now acknowledged
to be the best safeguard of both private and public interests.
They are the basis of the new science of EflSciency, which is
working a revolution in industrial methods. They are the
only check that exists for the restraint of speculation, and
the emancipation of the many from the iron domination of
the few. They are not always suflficient to accomplish
that; but they do place in the possession of all, information
which formerly did not exist, or was confined to the few.
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 39
I have reserved reference to industrial statistics, because
they are sui generis. They are the touchstone of the new
social era upon the outskirts of which we are hovering.
The Bureau of Labor, organized by Carroll D. Wright in
1884 upon the high plane of absolute impartiality in han-
dling the complex problems of the relations of capital and
labor, has learned much from foreign bureaus in the same
field, organized at later dates, and has taught them much.
There is no more difficult statistical field, and none more
important. The Census office, in dealing with manufact-
ures, has been appalled by the wage problem of the day rate,
the weekly rate, the piece-price rate, often utilized side by
side in the same mill — a problem in which every separate
occupation in every industry may represent a differing wage;
in which the degree of non-employment varies constantly; in
which a thousand factors enter to invalidate conclusions as
to the average number of employes in a given industry, the
average earning, and the actual relative share of employer
and employe in the increment of industry. It is the most
intricate riddle which confronts statistician and economist.
Colonel Wright once remarked that " we cannot get at it by
any scientific method." The answer is, that the method
must be found; for the live wire of today leads into the heart
of these questions.^
Sooner or later we have got to face questions of old age
pensions, workingmen's insurance — ^fields in which Germany
has led the way, and Great Britain is entering. We have
deliberately created industrial conditions which make the
living wage a burning issue. Whether or not the solution of
the social problem lies along these lines, we cannot yet be
sure; for socialized Germany, far as she has advanced along
this pathway, and heroically as she is footing the tax bills,
has not yet enabled the world to determine whether the
road leads to solution or revolution.
But of one thing we may be sure: the substitution of arbi-
40 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tration for the old-fashioned strike and lock-out, expedients
of war and not of civilization, is inevitable.
An educated public opinion demands, with increasing per-
sistency, that brute force shall no longer be the test of who is
right and who is wrong in these perpetually recurring indus-
trial contests.
When a gigantic struggle arises between the thousands of
employes of our great railway systems, and their directorates,
arbitration becomes the sole protection of the pubKc against
the paralysis of business which would follow the suspension
of transcontinental ti-affic; and Congress and the President
unite to enact over night a modification of the Erdman act
which makes it adequate to present-day conditions. The
arbitrators seek to ascertain the truth, as to the points in
dispute; their appeal is to the statistician. He analyzes the
books and accounts of the corporations; he determines, from
the study of income and outgo, whether or not the demand
of the employe is just, when tested by ability to concede
its justice; and the arbitrator decides whether the value of
the service rendered is such as to warrant an advance which
earnings make possible.
The anthracite coal arbitration of 1902, taught the nation
there is an equitable and reasonable solution always possible,
when a labor war breaks out. The recent settlement of the
great strikes in the clothing manufacture in New York and
Boston, on the basis of what has come to be known as the
Brandeis Protocol, was epoch-making; for that instrument,
now in successful operation, goes beyond the juridical settle-
ment of a strike; it supplies the simple machinery by means
of which, so long as both parties respect it, a strike can never
occur. The invention and adoption of that Protocol were
like a burst of simshine through clouds that had been gather-
ing for generations.
The world has long been obsessed by the dread of an im-
pending struggle between labor and capital — ^a titanic conflict
involving our entire social system and leading perhaps to
another French revolution. And lo, the solution is at hand;
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 41
for the statistician has appeared, and behind him is an edu-
cated public opinion, which demands that equity shall be
the basis of compromise, and trusts the statistician to prove
mathematically where equity lies. The task is his to solve
the question, and he must search until he finds the solution.
We live in an age of figures, and their combinations are the
golden threads which guide our footsteps through the laby-
rinthine mazes of the social and economic problems which
modem civilization creates.
The labor problem is a world problem. It does not materi-
ally differ in any western nation. We have advanced as far
toward its sane solution as any. The New Zealand and
Australian experiments are more radical; but it is today a
serious question whether these young countries have not gone
too far; whether they will not be compelled to retrace their
steps, perhaps with much turmoil. The rest of the world
looks to us, and not to them.
VI
Other problems confront us. One of them is unique in the
United States. It is the problem of race admixture, growing
out of the impact upon the native stock of 25,000,000 immi-
grants, of all bloods and creeds and languages, from all
European countries and many parts of Asia, steadily increas-
ing at the rate of a million souls a year. It is a new phe-
nomenon in world history; no large movement of the races of
mankind from one region to another has ever occurred under
conditions at all resembling them.
Should immigration continue on its present scale, should
the disparity in the fertility of the foreign and native stocks
also continue, our population, which at the time this Asso-
ciation was founded was almost wholly Anglo-American,
and in 1900 half native and half foreign, may in 1950 be
three fourths or more of foreign blood.
This immigration is profoundly affecting our civilization,
our institutions, our habits and our ideals. It has trans-
planted here alien tongues, alien religions, and alien theories
42 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of government; it has been a powerful influence in the rapid
disappearance of the Puritanic outlook upon life which under-
laid the Connecticut blue laws, and established what was
once called the American Sabbath. It has upset time-
honored precedents and modified our whole social and eco-
nomic life. It is already leading to a mingling of many bloods
in a hybrid race, which presents the most important demo-
graphic and ethnological experiment the world has known.
Accompanying this irruption of alien races, is a startling de-
chne in the native birth rate, and a corresponding decrease in
the size of families.
No one yet knows how far national character is affected
by blood admixture. We have no basis for estimating the
comparative importance of heredity and environment.
Neither have we any prejudice against miscegenation — bar-
ring only a profoimd antipathy to the intermarriage of white
and black, and white and yellow. Therein we differ from
the Japanese, who boast that their blood has been kept
absolutely pure for ages. As the generations roll by, as this
race amalgamation becomes more intensive, we may find
the American people the finest specimens of the human
race, physically, mentally and artistically, the world has
yet developed. But to make this possible, it is high time
that we made more restrictive the immigration laws which
now welcome with inconceivable prodigality the undesir-
ables of every occidental race to the rapidly lessening oppor-
tunities of our continent.
Wonderful is the statistical problem thus presented.
Who shall turn adequately the searchlight of our science
on the decline of the homogeneous stock that made this
nation, and the capacity for self-government of its suc-
cessors? Who shall measure the gravity of the change,
the sinister meaning of the fact that a race that ran out its
strength in a century is recruiting itself from nations that
have had a thousand years of history.? Will the environ-
ment that is burning out our stock so quickly, effect the
same result in its successors? Will these composites who
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 43
are assuming the lead prove equal to their task? What of
their devotion to law? Not in words, but in deeds and
example? Upon Anglo-Saxon reverence for law has been
founded and reared this republic. Are there not signs in
the restlessness of the times of the new temperament of the
composite?
When Emerson wrote, "the eternal public is always right,"
he little dreamed that the public he diagnosed from the
serene atmosphere of Concord half a century ago, would
be transformed into the conglomeration of peoples which
makes our public opinion of today.
Notwithstanding our declining native birth rate, the swell-
ing hordes of immigrants with their fertile families are
keeping up a population increase which embodies a phenom-
enon without parallel. On the assumption that the yearly
increase has been equal to one tenth of that shown by the
decennial census, our population has already doubled four
times since 1790; and if immigration continues to increase,
notwithstanding the declining birth rate, it will approximate
300,000,000 by the year 2000. What is to be the economic
status of this coming population, approaching in numbers
that of China? Already certain tendencies are well marked,
and significant, if not ominous.
VII
How swiftly the whole economic situation in our country
has been metamorphosed! Prior to 1840, three quarters of
the population was engaged in agriculture. In 1910, very
nearly one half of the people were concentrated in cities and
towns of 5,000 population and over; and we have 195 cities,
each with a population of 30,000 or more. Of the seven
largest cities in the world. New York ranks second, and
Chicago fourth. These 195 American cities are governed
under heterogeneous charters of every conceivable variation,
constantly tinkered or replaced, in a restless search for some-
thing better, which may be worse. They concentrate within
comparatively narrpw limits the problems of modern civili-
44 MEMORIAL VOLUME
zation in their intensest forms. Here governmental control
of public utilities is most necessary and often the most
inefficient. Here the immigrants herd ia slums, forming
great segregated colonies of alien races. Here the tenement
house and the sweat-shop flourish. Here pauperism is
chronic in given areas. Here tuberculosis is self-breeding,
and sanitation at its worst. Here crime and the gin shop
are partners, sometimes with the police as a silent member
of the firm. Here the white slave traffic spreads its net, and
Adce takes on its most hideous forms. Here graft is ever on
the alert for new forms of illicit profit. Here organized
charity, public and private, finds its widest and most difficult
field.
In dealing with this congeries of municipal problems, it is
imperative that there shall be comparison between condi-
tions and results in different municipalities, so that each
may profit from the experiments of all the rest; and only
the statistical method is adapted for these studies. Es-
pecially useful is it to have a basis of comparative costs, in
all cities, of all forms of public service; for it is in the cities
that public debt, expenditures, and taxes are increasing at
unprecedented rates; — $2,399,932,026 was the funded and
floating indebtedness of these cities in 1910 — larger by far
than national, state and county debts combined. The
census statistics of cities illuminate many of the municipal
problems. They reveal their multitude and their immensity.
But they suggest no method whereby can be arrested the
steady flow of population away from the soil and into the
city.
In the great city of London, the official reports reveal an
army of 124,000 paupers. The number varies, but the
tendency is to increase. Some are temporarily unemployed;
the bulk are chronic cases. This pitiful army appeals to
otu- compassion; but we do not want to add it to our popula-
tion. Its existence, in the financial center of the world, is
a hideous commentary upon the maladjustment of social
conditions, as well as upon the unequal usefulness of individ-
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 45
ual units in the social cosmos. It is terrible evidence that
the human race is made up of differing types of men and
women, a certain measurable proportion of whom are either
valueless, or detrimental to the rest of society, economically
and from every other point of view. We have as yet no
parallel in our country to this phase of municipal life in
London. But are not conditions such that we may yet
duplicate it?
It is not alone the immigrant who is crowding the cities,
and steadily increasing their drain upon the food production
of the agricultural sections. The allure of the city attracts
the young men and young women of the farm. They are
among the recruits who man the big shops and overcrowd
the non-productive occupations. Our modem type of
immigrant will not go to the farm; he prefers to herd with
his own; while back in the coimtry the farmer calls in vain
for help to plow and sow and reap. We have here no peas-
ant class, such as clings to the soil for generations in the
European countries. With an increase in population from
1900 to 1910 of 21 per cent., the urban population increased
34.8 per cent, and the rural population but 11.2 per cent.
In certain of the Eastern and Middle West States many
agricultural counties show decreases in population, even
when their towns and villages increase in size.
The increase of crops, from 1899 to 1909, was but 10 per
cent., as against this increase of 21 per cent, in population.
It is an inevitable inference that the ability of the country to
supply its own food products is soon to be put to the test.
In the former year, we cultivated for all cereals, 240 acres per
thousand of population; in 1909 only 208 acres. The increase
was only Vv of 1 per cent. ; yet the men, women and children
increased by fifteen million.
For a time at least we can meet this growing disparity in
food production, in cereals at least, by reducing agricultural
exports. Thus our domestic problem becomes a world
problem; for the older nations depend upon us to feed them;
they show, nearly everywhere, the same phenomenon — a
46 MEMORUL VOLUME
lessening ratio of increase in food production, as compared
to the population increase. We need not look beyond these
facts for the most important explanation of the world-wide
increase in the cost of living. The whole problem arises out
of the steadily decreasing proportion of the people, here and
elsewhere, engaged in productive agriculture. But we do
need to look carefully into these economic conditions which
are upsetting the economic status in which we have been
living without realizing what its causes are, what its effects
are certain to be. The tension is increasing so steadily, that
the breaking point must be reached in time — ^perhaps in
our life-time. It is a situation which calls for the best
thought of our best minds. Able men are studying it the
world over. The members of the American Statistical
Association can find no more fruitful field to which to direct
their investigations.
The growth of our cities, with their vast industrial plants
and their enormous output of manufactured goods, is ac-
cepted as the evidence of ever increasing prosperity. The
relatively small growth of our agriculture, and its actual
decline in sections where it once prospered, must just as
certainly be regarded as the sign of decadence. Conditions
thus justify the question whether our apparent prosperity is
not in some degree fictitious; and whether, in our hurry to
develop our natural resources and to pile up wealth, we have
not overstimulated industrial exploitation, and are destined
to pay the penalty.
Our country is the one in which the science of statistics has
the widest opportunity, the largest and most varied field, in
which results not only are the most interesting, but most po-
tent, in determining the future of civilization. It is an in-
spiring outlook for the young statistician. There is real
and vital work for him to do, as necessary and as valuable as
that which falls to any specialist in any field. Thus it
happens that the study of statistics has been introduced in
most of our great universities, and specialized training may
be obtained in any statistical field. Twenty five years ago
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 47
the subject was unrecognized in any college curriculum.
Today it is more generally taught in American institutions
of learning, than in those of any other country.
vin
But the vision of the future of the science is broader
than our own country; it reaches out over the whole
family of nations, where co-laborers are at work along the
same lines as ourselves, with equal energy and enthusiasm,
with results of equal importance.
One phase of this world work in statistical investigation is
especially important: it looks to the unification and stand-
ardization of international statistics, so that the application
of the laws which the science develops, may become universal.
We have seen that the governing laws of the social body
can only be discovered by the accumulation of statistical
facts; equally true is it, that when every country has its own
peculiar characteristics and types, these types only become
^capable of complete numerical expression when compared
with those of other countries. Statistics can accomplish
their full purpose only when data of identical character
embrace the widest possible field. It is the dream of the
true statistician that the day will some time arrive when the
facts of demography will be available, on identical bases, for
the entire globe. When that dream is realized; when com-
parable international statistics actually and everywhere
exist, then we shall know the laws which determine human
progress, and can eflfectively apply them. The International
Statistical Institute* has become a powerful agency, among
the many which are leading to this goal.
* The most notable paper read at the London Statistical Jubilee of 1885 was that
of Professor von Neuman-Spallart, who reviewed the work of the nine International
Statistical Congresses which had been held in the various capitals of Europe from
1853 to 1876, and had then ceased to reassemble. These nine Statistical Congresses
were held at Brussels, in 1853; Paris, in 1855; Vienna, in 1857; London, in 1860;
Beriin, in 1863; Florence, in 1867; The Hague, in 1869; St. Petersburg, in 1872; and
Budapest, in 1876. Professor Neuman-Spallart epitomized the work of these nine
Congresses, pointed out the long steps in advancing international statistics which
48 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Statistics is the twin sister of international law, in multi-
plying the ways and methods of mutual help, cooperation
and understanding between the nations. Both sciences
supply indispensable links in the lengthening chain of world
unity. Scores of conventions between nations regulate
their mutual intercourse — such as the Postal Union; the
codification of "the rules of the road" at sea; wireless teleg-
raphy regulations; international sanitary regulations — and
tend to make the world "a totality of interrelated forces."
Forty nations have aheady adopted and are using the metric
system of money, weights and measures. This agency for
the convenience and simplification of international com-
merce and intercourse has brought to the world a gain which
can not be measured even in statistical terms. May we not
then hope that the time will come when all the great nations
wiU recognize and accept the fact that the unification of
international statistics will prove an instrumentality equally
potent for the uplift of the human race in every land?
The greater problems to the solution of which statistics
lends its aid are world problems; each nation is at work upon
them, each in its own environment, according to its own lights,
out of its own peculiar experience. The language which
statistics employs is a imiversal language; but its terms and
methods must be made to approach that exactness and
uniformity which will make its lessons alike to all. By the
use of the statistical method, all nations are working out
these problems contemporaneously, each with the advantage
of knowledge of the experience of every other nation, and
each thus lending its own experience to all the others, in the
common quest for truth.
Some of us have faith to believe that the day of univer-
sal justice is coming to the world, that it draws yearly nearer,
and that in the end it will make international wars impossible.
marked the deliberations and the resolutions of each; and ended by a strong plea
for their reorganization in the form of a free International Statistical Institute —
which was then and there effected, and which has since continued in biennial meet-
ings, to render valuable service in the imification and harmonizing of a comparable
system of International statistics.
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESS 49
We recognize no agency more effective to this end than the
statistical method, through which alone we can gain com-
plete knowledge of ourselves and of other peoples, and
measure the relative progress of each and of all.
Thus the science of Statistics in the large sense is the
greatest of all the sciences; for beyond all others it becomes
the international bond of union. Behold therefore within
the life-time of the Association, through this young science
of ours the whole world is akin !
BOOK II
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OFFICIAL
STATISTICS IN MANY COUNTRIES
AUSTRALIA
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE
STATISTICAL SYSTEM OF AUSTRALIA
By George Handley Knibbs, C.M.G., F.S.S.
Honorary Member A.S.A., Member I.I.S., etc.
On the 23d August, 1770, Captain Cook took possession
"of the whole eastern coast from lat. 38° to (this place)
lat. 103^° S. in right of His Majesty King George the Third."
Sovereignty on behalf of the British crown was thus pro-
claimed over what are now the eastern parts of New South
Wales and Queensland. Formal possession of the whole of
the eastern part of the Australian continent and Tasmania
was taken on the 26th January, 1788, when Captain Phillip,
the first governor, read his commission to the people whom
he had brought with him in the " First Fleet." The territory
of New South Wales over which the governor had jurisdic-
tion, and of New Zealand, which may be included, although
Cook's annexation was not properly given eflfect to until
1840, was thus in square miles — ^Australia, east of 135°,
1,454,312; Van Diemen's Land, 26,215; New Zealand,
104,471; that is, a total of 1,584,998 square miles. The
western part of Australia, containing 1,494,054 square nules,
was later annexed. In 1863 Australasia had been divided
into seven colonies. (See table hereunder.) The Northern
Territory was formerly a portion of South Australia, i.e.,
from 1863 to 1910, but is now federal territory, and the
Federal Capital Territory was part of New South Wales.
On the 1st January, 1901, the colonies mentioned above,
with the exception of New Zealand, were federated under
the name " Commonwealth of Australia," and the component
colonies were thenceforward known as states.
What has preceded will render intelligible the evolution
of statistics in Australia. From the period of the first
settlement to the introduction of responsible government,
56
MEMORIAL VOLUME
DATES OP CREATION AND AREAS OF THE SEVERAL COLONIES AND
TERRITORIES
State.
1 ^
Sq.M.
State.
0
Sq. M.
New South Wales*. .
1786
1825
1829
1834
309,460
26,215
976,920
380,070
1841
1851
1859
1863
1911
104,751
Tasmania
Victoria
87,884
670,500
South Australia
(DroDcr)
Northern Territory ....
Fed. Capital Territory.
523,620
912
CoTnmonwealth 2,974,581 square miles.
* Exclusive of Federal Capital Territory.
the governor of New South Wales, and, from the separation
of their respective colonies, the governors of these colonies
were required to furnish annual reports to the Colonial
Office. For a number of years these reports dealt mainly
with administrative matters, the only statistical question
dealt with being that of population, but from about 1820
onward they contain information of a more varied nature,
and particulars in regard to schools, to judicial matters, to
the finances of the colony, and finally shipping and commercte
are added. The reports have now become "Blue Books,"
and it is in these Blue Books that practically all statistical
information relating to Australia in the first half of the
nineteenth century is to be obtained. As soon as the gov-
ernor was assisted in his official duties by a council, officers
were appointed to administer various departments of the
government. Of these officers one, generally called " colonial
secretary," and in some cases "chief secretary," acted as
the priacipal intermediary between the governor and the
people of the colony. He countersigned orders, and grad-
ually became charged with a multitude of functions, amongst
which the one interesting to us from a statistical point of
view was the annual preparation of the "Blue Book." For
AUSTRALIA 57
a number of years three manuscript copies were written out,
one for transmission to the Colonial Office, one for the gov-
ernor, and one for the colonial secretary himself. In due
course of time parts of the Blue Book seemed to have been
asked for by the general public so that it became necessary
to print them. Census tables were printed very early, but
financial statements and trade returns are available in man-
uscript only till well towards the middle of the century.
When government departments began to multiply, one of
the chief subordinate officers of the colonial secretary was
everywhere the registrar-general, very properly so called as
he was not only charged with the registration of births,
deaths, and marriages, but also with the registration of
titles to land, mortgages, and sometimes patents and copy-
right. The preparation of the Blue Book naturally devolved
upon this officer, and when the Colonial Office, after the
introduction of responsible government, no longer asked for
it, the governments of the various states continued the publi-
cation on their own account, its name being now changed to
that of "Statistical Register," while the name "Blue Book"
was retained exclusively for the annual list of public officers.
There is reason to believe that the registrars-general were
inclined to look upon the compilation of the annual " Statis-
tical Register" as an onerous addition to their legitimate
work, and that, therefore, no serious attempts were made
to improve the publications. New offices could be created
only under parliamentary authority, which might or might
not have been difficult to obtain if it had been asked for.
But it does not appear that any of the state governments
took much interest in the matter, and it was not until 1873
that the state of Victoria appointed a " Government Statist,"
who, in addition to his statistical duties, was also charged
with the registration of births, deaths, and marriages. The
New South Wales statistical office, established in 1886, was
the first office which was altogether separated from other
offices, and the only one which has remained more or less free
from extraneous work ever since.
58 MEMORIAL VOLUME
It was probably the healthy rivalry, which was not long in
showing itself, between the Victorian and New South Wales
offices which led to the great improvement in statistical work
from 1886 to 1906. Valuable contributions to statistical
inquiry were also made by the Tasmanian statistician, and
Western Australia did not wait long, after obtaining self-
government in 1890, before bringing its statistical methods
up to date.
The range of statistical data with which the state bureaus
were dealing during that period were approximately as fol-
lows:
(a) Statistics collected and compiled entirely by the bureaus:
Agriculture.
Dairy Farming.
Live Stock.
Manufactories.
Municipal Administration.
Hospitals, Asylums, etc.
(b) Statistics compiled in the bureaus from data collected by other public depart-
ments:
Population.
Births, Deaths, and Marriages.
Banks.
Life Assurancie.
Trade.
Shipping.
Criminal Justice.
(c) Statistics collected and compfled by other departments, and enlarged, con-
densed, coordinated, or otherwise adapted for publication by the bureaus:
Public Finance.
Railways and Tramways.
Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones.
Land Settlement.
Meteorology.
Mining Production.
Water Conservation and Lrigation.
Civil Justice.
Public Instruction, Scientific Societies, Museums, etc.
The unequal manner in which the state governments
equipped their bureaus both with officers and with funds
was the main cause of the degree of completeness with which
many of the data enumerated could be tabulated, and as
AUSTRALIA 59
time went on the want of cobrdination began to make itself
felt seriously.
Attempts to overcome this diflBeulty were made especially
in the "Victorian Year Book," which contained a large
amount of information relating to the whole of the states,
and in the publication of the New South Wales Bureau,
originally called "The Seven Colonies of Australasia," and
afterwards changed to "A Statistical Account of Australia
and New Zealand."
In addition the New South Wales Bureau published an-
nually "The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales,"
which was continued later as "The Official Year Book of
New South Wales." This book as well as the Victorian
Year Book have, with the exception of a few gaps, appeared
annually from the dates of their first publication to the
present time. Queensland, South Australia, Western Aus-
tralia, and Tasmania have also issued similar publications
at irregular intervals.
Several conferences of the state statisticians were held
during that period to deal with matters where coordination
was most urgently required, and in some, if not in all, cases
improvements resulted therefrom. This was notably so in
regard to the Censuses of 1891 and 1901, and to the collection
of statistics of manufactories.
There was, however, no authority in existence which could
enforce the decisions of these conferences, and it began,
therefore, to be recognized that a different arrangement was
required. The opportunity to do so presented itself with
the federation of the six Australian states, which took place
as from 1st January, 1901. The fifty first section of the
Commonwealth Constitution Act contains, among a list of
thirty nine different subjects concerning which the common-
wealth is authorized to legislate, as No. 11, the item "Census
and Statistics." It was, however, not until the 8th Decem-
ber, 1905, that the "Census and Statistics Act, 1905,"
passed by the federal parliament, became law. This Act,
the main provisions of which are quoted below, provided for
60 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the appointment of a federal statistician and for the estab-
lishment of a Federal Bureau of Census and Statistics.
Present Statistical Organization
The "Census and Statistics Act, 1905" provides:
(1) For the appointment of a commonwealth statistician and for the delegation
of his powers;
(i8) For the taking of a census in 1911, and every tenth year thereafter;
(3) For the annual collection of statistics in relation to all or any of the following
matters:
(a) Population.
(b) Vital, Social, and Industrial Matters.
(c) Employment and Non-employment.
(d) Imports and Exports.
(e) Interstate Trade.
(f) Postal and Telegraphic Matters.
(g) Factories, Mines, and Productive Industries generally.
(h) Agricultural, Horticultural, Viticultm-al, Dairying, and Pastoral
Industries,
(i) Banking, Instu-ance, and Finance,
(j) Railways, Tramways, Shipping, and Transport,
(k) Land Tenure and Occupancy; and
(1) Any other prescribed matters.
Under the authority of this Act, a commonwealth statis-
tician was appointed early in 1906, and as it appeared desir-
able that the nucleus of his staff should be appointed from
among the officers of the existing state bureaus, he soon
afterwards undertook a journey to each of the six state
capitals in order to inquire into the methods adopted in
the collection and compilation of statistics, the qualifications
of individual officers, and into the legal and administrative
powers possessed by the different bureaus for the collection
of their statistics. On his return he made certain recom-
mendations to the government, and soon afterwards a num-
ber of officers were appointed, so that the Bureau of Census
and Statistics was able to commence operations in November,
1906.
Practically the first matter of importance to be considered
was the question of the relations between the Commonwealth
AUSTRALIA 61
Bureau and the existing state bureaus. Two methods of
procedure were open to the federal government.
The first was the complete unification of all statistical
organizations in Australia. If this had been adopted the
Commonwealth Bureau would have controlled all statistical
work, and would have been represented in each state by a
branch office which would have undertaken the collection
and first tabulation of statistical data under the direction of
the central bureau. A second method was to preserve the
internal independence of the state bureaus, and to arrange
for them to furnish the federal bureau with data compiled
according to a system agreed upon. The federal govern-
ment chose the second method as being, at present, and in
view of all circimistances, more suitable to the actual con-
dition of Australian statistics, and it was thereupon resolved
to hold a conference of statisticians which should discuss
the arrangements to be made in order to satisfy the require-
ments of the state government as well as those of the fed-
eral government.
A statistical conference met in Melbourne in November
and December, 1906, under the presidency of the common-
wealth statistician, and all the states of the commonwealth
were represented as well as the dominion of New Zealand. A
number of resolutions were passed, and a set of statistical
forms approved, on which the state statisticians undertook
to furnish compilations of the data collected in their respec-
■ tive states. It was recognized, however, that the collection
of such a uniform set of statistics would meet with difficul-
ties in those states whose offices were insufficiently staffed,
and a further resolution was, therefore, unanimously agreed
to, by which the statisticians undertook to make represen-
tations to their governments in regard to the supply of the
means and the staff necessary to the carrying out of their
obligations towards the Commonwealth Bureau of Statis-
tics. It was further resolved to adopt, in the compilation
of vital statistics, the nosological classification of the Inter-
national Statistical Institute. At the wish of the stat-
62 MEMORIAL VOLUME
isticians, the commonwealth statistician undertook the
preparation of a translation of the latest French issue of the
classification.
In the main, relations between the Commonwealth Bureau
and the state bureaus have continued on the basis estab-
lished by the 1906 conference, but it was soon found neces-
sary for the Commonwealth Bureau to undertake original
compilations, and to develop the scope of the work beyond
the mere summarization and analysis of returns furnished
by the state bureaus.
The first branch of statistics taken over for compilation
by the Commonwealth Bureau was that relating to com-
merce and shipping. Beturns are received direct from the
various customs houses and compiled in this Bureau. Not-
withstanding the provisions of the Census and Statistics
Act, it has been found necessary to omit the interstate trade
from the compilation during recent years, inasmuch as the
Customs Department has ceased to collect data in relation
thereto.
It was, moreover, soon found that a compilation of vital
statistics, based on the compilations made in the six state
bureaus, would not only be very late in appearing, but would
not make the best use of the information to be extracted
from the registers of births, deaths, and marriages, it being
self-evident that the pace made by the slowest of the bureaus
limited the Commonwealth Bureau, and that the scope of
the information would be determined by the bureau making
the most meager use of the information at its command.
It was, therefore, decided to undertake the original com-
pilation of vital statistics in the Commonwealth Bureau,
and arrangements were made under which the registrars-
general of the states supply the Bureau quarterly with copies
of all registrations effected in their states. These copies are
furnished on individual cards, and enable the compilation to
progress continuously during the year, so that the Bureau
now finds it possible to issue the complete vital statistics
AUSTRALIA 63
of the commonwealth about six months after the completion
of the year.
It has been stated on a previous page that the New South
Wales Statistical Bureau had been publishing annually since
1891 "The Seven Colonies of Australasia," succeeded later
by "A Statistical Account of Australia and New Zealand."
It was considered, on the estabhshment of the Common-
wealth Bureau, that the compilation of a publication of that
nature properly fell within the sphere of the federal authori-
ties, and arrangements were therefore made for the publi-
cation of the "OflBcial Year Book of The Commonwealth,"
the first issue of which appeared in 1907, and which has been
continued annually since that date. The publication of
the "Statistical Account" came to an end in 1904.
The "Census and Statistics Act, 1905 " provided, amongst
other things, for the annual collection of statistics in rela-
tion to industrial matters, and to employment and non-
employment. It was not until 1910 that this work could
be taken in hand. An inquiry was then made into the cost
of living by means of householders' budgets covering the
period from 1st July, 1910, to 30th June, 1911, and the re-
sults were published in December, 1911. This was followed
in December, 1912, by a Report on Prices, Price Indexes,
and the Cost of Living, and in April, 1913, by a further Re-
port on Trade Unionism, Unemployment, Wages, Prices,
and Cost of Living, 1891 to 1912. In this connection an
investigation was made to determine the technical pro-
cedure which would yield satisfactory results, and a method
of aggregate expenditure on a complex-unit was adopted
after having been shown to have the maximum theoretical
as well as practical advantage. Since then a Labor Bulle-
tin has been published quarterly which deals with the fol-
lowing matters :
Industrial Conditions.
Unemployment.
Retail Prices, House Rent, and Cost of Living.
Wholesale Prices.
64 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Industrial Disputes.
Changes in Rate of Wages.
Assisted Immigration.
State Free Employment Bureaus.
Industrial Accidents.
Distribution of Wages in Manufacturing Industries.
Reports from Industrial Centers in the Several States.
Reports of Labor Departments and Bureaus in Aus-
tralia.
Labor Matters Abroad and Imperial and Foreign Pub-
lications.
In accordance with the "Census and Statistics Act," the
Commonwealth Bureau carried out the first Commonwealth
Census in 1911. This implied the employment of about
400 enumerators (supervisors of Census Districts), 7,000
collectors, a maximum of 280 tabulators, and an expendi-
ture of £170,000. A nnimber of preliminary census bulletins
have been published, and the complete work, including a
voluminous report, should shortly be received from the
printers.
The officers at the head of the several statistical bureaus
of Australia, both the "statisticians" themselves and their
principal officers, have received their training through prac-
tical work. This has been necessitated by the fact that
there were no professional courses in the universities having
special regard to statistics, a subject which has not been
undertaken by the Australian universities. At the present
time, however, there are courses on commerce and economics
in Sydney and Melbourne. It is perhaps desirable to ex-
plain that both in the commonwealth and in the states there
are public service acts in existence which make it practically
impossible, with the exception of the case of purely profes-
sional officers, for officers to be appointed to the service after
they have passed a certain age limit, and otherwise than to
the lowest class of the service. It follows, therefore, that
the statistical bureaus are principally recruited from raw
material, and that they have to undertake the training of
AUSTRALIA 65
their own officers. Of course there are possibilities of trans-
ferring suitable officers from other departments, and for
transferring officers from the state services to the federal
service. This system, though by no means perfect, works
fairly well, in those offices at least where the heads take
sufficient interest in their junior officers to see that they do
not merely pick up the routine of their work, but that they
devote some of their spare time to private study. The
system, however, leaves much to be desired and could be
greatly improved.
A list of publications issued by the Commonwealth Bureau
and by the several state bureaus is appended. The list
also contains those publications of a more or less statistical
nature which are periodically issued by other government
departments.
Future Development of Statistical Organization
The defects at present existing in the statistical organi-
zation of Australia may be divided into : (1) Administrative
defects, and (2) Defects in the scope of the statistics.
With respect to the former, it may be said that, although
as regards the destinies and development of its five million
people, Australia is a unity — and consequently its statistics
should be on a common basis throughout — ^there is at pres-
ent no satisfactory method of ensuring xmiformity in the
collection of data and in the compilation of its statistics.
For so small a population, the compilation, for the entire
continent, one would think, should be undertaken at one
center, at the earliest possible moment and in a uniform
manner. As a matter of fact this is done only for statistics
of population, vital statistics, trade and shipping, banking,
insurance, cost of living, labor, and wages statistics, while
the important fields of statistics of production, involving
agricultural, pastoral, dairying, mining, manufacturing,
forestry and fisheries, etc., are independently collected and
computed by individual states, and there is no one center
where all the details are available for systematic study. It
66 MEMORIAL VOLUME
is obvious that only by authoritative direction from some
one central authority can further fuhdamental improve-
ment now be readily secured. Uniform efficiency in the
machinery of statistical administration in the several states
cannot readily be secured since the equipment in per-
sonnel and material is diflferent in each state: a central
bureau is powerless to remedy this without being in gen-
eral control. Under the Census and Statistics Act of the
Commonwealth adequate powers exist to do all that is
necessary, and, if radical improvement is to be effected, it
may become necessary for the latent powers of the com-
monwealth to be exercised to a greater extent than at
present. The existing scheme is only a modus vivendi, and
appears to have inherent limitations which even the most
cordial response on the part of the state statistical authori-
ties could not entirely remove. Administrative direction
as regards the entire scheme of collecting and compiling
statistics should be centralized. This would secure not only
uniformity but should also greatly reduce the aggregate
cost, and would, moreover, properly subordinate the merely
local to the general interest. This is an essential for any
fundamental improvement.
Throughout the world, social and economic changes are
so rapid that their acciu-ate statistical measurement becomes
increasingly important. The relations of labor and capital,
moreover, are becoming more and more subject to state
interference, and an adequate statistic for the appraisement
of its consequence has become essential. To accurately
appreciate the magnitude of the dynamic force of economic
changes, and to forecast the consequences of labor and
general legislation, there never was a greater need for an
appropriate statistic. Nor was there ever a time when
statistics were more needed as a guide to future legislation.
The necessary data need to be compiled and statistical
analyses to be made. In this connection may be men-
tioned such features as variations in the cost of living due to
changes, both in the standard and in the prices of commodi-
AUSTRALIA 67
ties. The labor policy of forcing up wages, and its eco-
nomic, industrial and political consequences, necessitate
the most careful study. Considerations of this nature in-
dicate that future legislation will do well to be guided by
statistical research, and that its effects need to be subjected
to statistical analysis.
The details of the various problems will, however, no
doubt present different features in different countries, so
that, in regard to international cooperation, there can only
be a general agreement as to technique and method.
In connection with the question of securing the largest
possible amount of international cooperation, it may be
said, that for comparative purposes, the wider the range
of uniformity the more valuable will be the statistics.
To bring about a satisfactory issue, it is essential that some
person with a suflBcient staff shall study the entire scheme and
all the details of the collection and compilation of the statis-
tics of each country. By means of such a study, a wide
scheme of unification could be developed and submitted
for the consideration of the statisticians of individual coip-
tries for their criticisms and observations. Thjs draft,
amended after receiving such criticism, and then submitted
to an international conference, would probably lead to val-
uable results. Nothing short of this will, in my judgment,
be successful, and it would be an international labor, well
worthy to be undertaken. The International Statistical
Institute is already moving in this direction.
The mqde of selecting and appointing officers in Australia
has already been referred to. Unquestionably considerable
improvement can be made in securing appropriate quali-
fication and the proper training of statistical officers. A
statistical bureaiu requires two classes of assistants, namely:
(1) Tabulators, compilers, and arithmetical computers; and
(2) mathematical and general analysts.
The ordinary tabulator, compiler and computer has, in
the main, merely a routine occupation. The technique
which he has to acquire is not really difficult, and his daily
68 MEMORIAL VOLUME
activities demand little more than arithmetical expertness
and general shrewdness. He may be said to belong to the
army of superior clerks, and to possess what are essentially
clerical qualifications.
The mathematical and general analyst and higher com-
puter must, in addition to the special mathematical knowl-
edge, possess considerable powers of analysis, aptitude for
original research, and the special ability to penetrate the
hidden significance of statistical data in any department
to which he may apply himself. It is on ability of this
kind that the just interpretation of the statistical results
depends, and for this reason he needs to be a man of higher
education.
Under the existing scheme in Australia, there is no ade-
quate official provision for securing men of the necessary
education and natural aptitude. It hardly needs to be
pointed out that routine training will not develop the
necessary talent. As in all higher callings, it is essential
to make a selection from people with natural endowments
in the required direction. The public service system prob-
ably everywhere tends to appraise mere shrewdness more
highly than specialized ability. The type of man needed
for higher statistical work is the scientific type. Because of
this, and because the officer of the highest qualffication
loves his calling, and has not time to keep superficial attain-
ments constantly in evidence, he is in perpetual danger of
being overlooked in so-called official advancement. Ad-
vance in these instances should be possible and should be
awarded for increasing efficiency in the special field. The
men who are most able and most deVoted to their special
fields will have the least time to devote to the usual methods
of attaining advancement. Since the very character of
his special qualifications tends to minimize his chances of
promotion, it is necessary to place its financial inducements
on a higher plane than those of mere clerical and admin-
istrative positions.
AUSTRALIA 69
APPENDIX
Statistieal Publications of Australia
(I) iNTKODtrcTOKT. — ^The official statistical publications of Australia may be
divided bibliographically into two main divisions, viz.: — (1) Commonwealth pub-
lications dealing both individually and collectively with the several states of the
commonwealth, and (2) state publications dealing with individual states only.
Besides these there are a large nimiber of publications issued regularly, which,
though not wholly statistical, necessarily contain a consideiable amount of statis-
tical information. These are included in the lists given hereunder, which are
revised to the end of 1913.
(II) Commonwealth Ptiblications. — Commonwealth publications may be
grouped under two heads, viz.: — (a) Publications issued by the Commonwealth
Statistician, and (b) Departmental Reports and Papers.
{a) Publications issued by the Commonwealth Statistician. The following is
a list of statistical publications issued from the Commonwealth Bureau of Cen-
sus and Statistics since its inauguration and up to 31st December, 1913.
The annual Demography, Finance, Production, and Transport and Commimica-
tion Bulletins cover statistics from 1901. The Year Book contains figures from
earlier years.
Census Bulletins — Jffo. 1 — ^Population of States and Territories; No. 2 —
Persons of Non-European Race; No. 3 — ^Ages; No. 4 — Population of Coun-
ties, Local Government Areas, etc.; No. 5 — ^Population of Electoral Divi-
sions, Provinces, and Districts; No. 6 — Birthplaces; No. 7 — ^Length of Resi-
dence in Australia; No. 8— Religions; No. 9 — ^Education; No. 10 — Blindness
and Deafmutism; No. 11 — Schooling; No. 12 — Conjugal Condition; No.
13 — ^Localities; No. 14 — ^Mortality Investigation; No. IS — Families; No.
16 — Occupations; No. 17 — Occupied Dwellings.
Finance — Bulletins, annually, 1907 to 1912.
Labour and Industrial Statistics — ^Explanatory Memorandum on the Proposed
Scheme. Report No. 1 — ^Prices, Price-Indexes and Cost of Living in Aus-
tralia. Report No. 2 — ^Trade Unionism, Unemployment, Wages, Prices,
and Cost of Living in Australia, 1891 to 1912.
Labour Bulletins — Quarterly, May, August, and November, 1913.
Inquiry into the Cost of Living in Australia, 1910-11 — Reports on Prices, Price
Indexes, and the Cost of Living, 1912. Report on Trade Unionism, Unem-
ployment, Wages, Prices, and Cost of Living, 1913. Labour Bulletins
(quarterly) Nos. 1 to 4.
Monthly Summary of Australian Statistics — Bulletins, monthly, since January,
1912.
Population and Vital Statistics Bulletins — Determination of the Population of
Australia, 1901 to 1906. Commonwealth Demography, annually, 1906 to
1910. Vital Statistics, annually, 1907 to 1910. Commonwealth Demog-
70 MEMORIAL VOLUME
raphy (.comprising matter previously included in two last-named Bulletins)
1911 and 1912. Vital Statistics, quarterly, 1907 to June, 1911. The
Nomenclature of Diseases and of Causes of Death, 1907. New Edition,
1910.
Production — ^Bulletins, annually, 1906 to 1911.
Professional Papers — ^No. 1 — ^The Classification of Diseases and Causes of
Death, from the standpoint of the Statistician; Nos. 2 and 3 — On the Influ-
ence of Infantile Mortality on Birthrate (2 papers) ; No. 4 — On the Statistical
Opportunities of the Medical Profession; No. 6 — ^Tuberculosis Duration
Frequency Curves, and the number of existing cases ultimately fatal; No.
6 — The Problems of Statistics; No. 7 — ^The Evolution and Significance of the
Census; No. 8 — Census Taking, by C. H. Wickens, A.I.A.; No. 9 — Studies
p
in Statistical Representation — On the nature of the curve ^ "*"* ; No.
10 — Studies in Statistical Representation — Statistical Application of the
Fourier series; No. 11 — Suicide in Australia; No. 12 — ^An Extension of
the Principle Underlying Woolhouse's Method of Graduation, by C. H.
Wickens, A.I.A.; No. 13 — ^The First Commonwealth Census; No. 14 —
Mathematical Analysis of CK^iatological Physiology; No. 16 — The Inter-
national Nosological Classification, etc.; No. 16 — Secular Progress of Pul-
monary Tuberculosis and Cancer, etc.; No. 17 — The Improvement in Infan-
tile Mortality, etc.; No. 18 — Secular and Annual Fluctuations of Deaths
from Several Diseases, etc.
Railway Statistics — ^Report on the Desirability of Improved Statistics of
Government Railways in Australia, February, 1909.
Shipping — Shipping and Oversea Migration, annually, 1906 to 1912.
Social Insurance — ^Report to the Hon. the Minister of Trade and Customs.
Superannuation for the Commonwealth Public Service — ^Report to the Hon. the
Minister of Home Affairs.
The Australian Commonwealth: Its Resources and Production — Annually, 1908
to 1913.
Trade and Customs — ^Trade, and Customs and Excise Revenue, annually, 1906
to 1912.
Trade, Shipping, and Oversea Migration — ^Monthly, January, 1907, to De-
cember, 1911 (now discontinued; issued as part of Monthly Summary of
Australian Statistics).
Transport and Communicaiion — Bulletins, annually, 1906 to 1912.
Social Statistics — Bulletins, annually, 1907 to 1911.
Official Year Book of the Commonwealth — Aimually, 1907 to 1912.
Pocket Compendium of Commonwealth Statistics — Official Statistics, 1913.
(6) Commonwealth Parliamentary and Departmental Reports and Papers. The
following are the principal official reports and papers containing statistical matter
which have been issued since the inauguration of the commonwealth:
Arbitration Coiui;: Returns of Awards, Conferences, Agreements, etc.
Australia for Farmers, 1910.
Australia: The Wheat Country.
Australian Notes: Correspondence relating to the Gold Reserve in respect of
the issue of.
AUSTRALIA 71
Budget, annual, 1901-02 to 1913-14.
Chief of the General Staff: Memo, re Defence.
Commonwealth Bank: Balance Sheets and Reports of Auditor-General.
Commonwealth Factories: Reports on Clothing, Cordite, Small Arms, and
Harness and Leather Factories.
Commonwealth Meteorologist: Bulletins of Climate and Meteorology of
Australia; Rainfall Maps of Australia; Professional Papers and Charts
(various); Monthly Meteorological Reports, commencing January, 1910.
Commonwealth Military Journal, issued quarterly, April, 1911, to October,
1913.
Contract Immigrants Act and Immigration Restriction Act: Returns annually,
1902 to 1912.
Defence: Inspector-General of Military Forces: Reports, 1905 to 1907.
Extracts from Report, annual, 1910 to 1913.
Defence: Memorandimi on Australian Military Defence and its progress since
Federation.
Defence: Memorandum on the Defence of Australia, by Field-Marshal Lord
Kitchener.
Defence: Military Board — Reports, 1905 and 1906.
Defence: Naval Defence of Australia — Memorandum by Admiral Sir Regi-
nald Henderson.
Defence: Report on Dockyards, Canteens at Camps, Royal Military College,
Universal Training, Cadets, Organization and Distribution, etc.
Director of Naval Forces: Report for 1906.
Electoral Act: Commissioners' Special Reports.
Electoral Rolls: Statement by Commonwealth Statistician re Inflation.
Electoral Statistical Returns re Referenda of 1911 and 1913.
Electoral Statistics of Commonwealth Elections: 1903, 1906, 1910 and 1913.
Estimates: 1901-2 to 1913-14. Also Supplementary Estimates.
Federal Capital City Designs.
Fisheries: Reports of the Director on Fishing Experiments carried out by the
F.I.S. "Endeavour."
Fisheries: Reports on Pearling Industry.
Fisheries: Zoological Results of Fishing Experiments. Parts 1 to 3.
Fleet Unit: Memorandimi re arrangement for providing and training personnel .
Fruit Industry: Report of Royal Commission.
Handbooks of the Territory of Papua.
High Commissioner of the Commonwealth: Reports, annual, 1910 to 1912.
Reports on Australian Butter Market in England. Visit to Canada and
United States.
Home Affairs: Schedule of the Department, compiled from the Minister's
Digests. Nos. 1 to 14.
Invalid and Old-Age Pensions: Statements re.
Land Tax Assessment Act: Annual Reports of Commissioner, 1910-11 an V
1911-12.
Lands and Surveys: Report of Confeience of Commonwealth Director and
States Surveyors-General .
Lighthouses: Reports of I nspections, etc.
72 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Manufactures Eucouragement Act: Returns of Bounties Paid; annual.
Military and Naval Forces Lists. Also Cadet Forces Lists.
Naturalization Act 1903 : Returns.
Northern Territory: Bulletins Nos. 1 to 8.
Northern Territory: Report of the Government Resident for 1910 (previous
reports to Government of South Australia).
Northern Territory: Report of the Acting Administrator for 1911. Admin-
istrator's Report, 1912.
Northern Territory: Reports, various.
Papua: Reports, annual, 1904-5 to 1911-12, and returns to accompany same.
Papua: Reports, various.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
Patents Statistics, 1904 to 1913.
Postal Services Royal Commission.
Postmaster-General's Department: Annual Reports, 1910 and 1911-12.
Postmaster-General's Department: Statement of Business transacted and
details of Receipts and Expenditure, 1907, 1908 and 1909.
Press Cable Subsidy: Amount paid, etc.
Public Service Commissioner: Report, 1901-4, and Annual Reports, 1905 to
1912, and Public Service Lists, 1903 to 1912-13.
Quarantine: Reports.
Railways: Reports, various, re Gauges of Australian Railways, Unification of
Gauges, etc.
Railways: Reports of Engineei^in-Chief.
Representation Act 1905: Retiu-ns.
Royal Commission on Tasmanian Customs Leakage.
Secret Remedies: Based on British Medical Association's Analyses.
Social Insurance: Report by the Hon. Sir John Cockbum on the Hague
Conference of 1910.
Sugar: Statistics, 1901-2 to 1910-11 re White and Black Labour, Production,
Duties, Excise, Bounties, etc.
Sugar Industry: Report of Royal Commission.
Tariff Guide: 1903 to 1912. Also Tariff Schedules.
Trade and Customs Returns, 1903 to 1905; compiled by the New South Wales
Government Statistician for the Minister for Customs.
Trade Marks Statistics, 1904 to 1913.
Treasurer's Statements and Reports of Auditor-General, annual, 1901-2 to
1911-12.
Treasury Notes: Amounts issued to the respective Banks of the Common-
wealth.
Treasury Statements of Receipts and Expenditure, issued quarterly in the
Commonwealth Gazette.
Tropical Diseases: Report by Dr. Breinl.
(Ill) State Publications. — The chief statistical publications of each state
issued since Federation may be most conveniently grouped under the following
heads, viz.: — (a) PubUcations issued by the government statist, (6) parliamentary
AUSTRALIA 73
and departmental reports and papers, and (c) reports and statements of local and
public bodies. These are set out hereunder for each state:
(o) New South Waibs. — (1) Publications by Government Statistician:
The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales, 1900-1.
The Seven Colonies of Australasia, 1901-2.
A Statistical Accoimt of Australia and New Zealand, 1902-3, 1903-4.
The Official Year Book of New South Wales, 1904-5 to 1912.
Six States of Australia and New Zealand (annual statistics), 1901 to 1905.
Monthly Statistical Bulletin, 1905 to September, 1913.
Statistical Registers, 1901 to 1911, and 1912 (parts).
Census of New South Wales, 1901.
Vital Statistics (annual), 1901 to 1912; and monthly issues to September, 1913.
Agricultural and Live Stock Statistics, 1901 to 1912.
Statistical View of the Progress of New South Wales during 50 years, 1856 to
1906.
Friendly Societies' Experience, New South Wales, 1900-8.
Comparative Legislation relating to the Industrial Classes.
Population of New South Wales and movements of population between New
South Wales and other Countries, quarterly, December, 1911, to June, 1913.
Annual and other Reports on Agricultural, Dairying, and Pastoral Industries,
on Manufactories and Works, and on Value of Production.
Statesman's Year Book, 1913.
(2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of:
Aborigines.
Australian Museum.
Board of Public Health.
Chief Commissioner of Railways.
Chief Medical Officer.
Comptroller-General of Prisons.
Department of Agriculture.
Department of Crown Lands.
Department of Mines.
Department of Police.
Department of Public Works.
Director of Botanical Gardens and Domain.
Director of Labour.
Factories and Shops Act; Minimiun Wage Act; Early Closing Acts; Shearers'
Accommodation Act, etc.
Fisheries Board.
Forestry Department.
Government Bureau of Microbiology.
Government Railways, Superannuation Account.
Government Savings Bank.
Immigration and Tourist Bureau.
Indtxstrial Schools.
Inspector-General of Insane.
Labour Commissioners.
Leprosy (Board of Health).
74 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Miners' Accident Relief Fund.
Minister of Public Instruction.
National Art Gallery.
National Park Trust.
Pharmacy Board.
Public Disaster Relief Fund.
Public Library.
Public Service Board.
Registrar of Friendly Societies, Building Societies, and Trade Unions.
Registrar-General.
Sayings Bank.
State Brickworks.
State Children's Relief Board.
State Debt Commissioners.
Superintendent of Carpenterian Reformatory.
Technological Museums.
University of Sydney.
Western Land Board.
Public Service Lists.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
Trade Reports, various.
Observatory Reports and Bulletins.
Public Accounts and Report of the Auditor-General.
Treasiirer's Financial Statement, and Papers to accompany.
General Election, 1910. Double Voting. Synopsis of the Voting.
The New South Wales Industrial Gazette (monthly).
State Contracts for the Public Service.
Agricultural Gazette (monthly).
Records of the Geological Survey.
Statement of Assets and Liabilities of Public Companies (quarterly).
Statement of Assets and Liabilities of Banks (quarterly).
Quarterly Return of Gold Yields.
(3) Reports and Statements of Local Bodies:
Annual Statements of Municipalities.
Eire Commissioners (formerly Fire Brigades Board).
Hospitals.
Hunter District Water Supply and Sewerage Board.
Metropolitan Board of Water Supply and Sewerage.
OfiBcial Handbook of the Port of Sydney.
Sydney Harbour Trust Commissioners.
Town Clerk of the City of Sydney.
(6) Victoria. — (1) Publications hy the Government Statist:
Statistical Re^sters, 1901 to 1911, and 1912 (parts).
The Victorian Year Books, 1902 to 1911-12, and 1912-13 (parts).
Quarterly Statistical Abstracts, 1904 to 30th June, 1913.
Quarterly Returns of Vital Statistics, 1901 to 30th June, 1913.
AUSTRALIA 75
Vital Statistics, 1911 and 1912.
Monthly Returns of Oversea Imports and Exports, 1901 to September, 1913.
Statistics of Manufactories, Works, etc., 1901 to 1911.
Australasian Statistics, 1901-2, with Summaries for Previous Years.
The First Fifty Years of Responsible Government in Victoria, 1866 to 1906.
Census of Victoria, 1901.
Annual Reports on Agricultural, Viticultural, Dairying, and Pastoral Indus-
tries, and on Value of Production.
ASnnual Report on Friendly Societies.
Annual Report on Trade Unions.
(2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of:
Board for the Protection of Abori^es.
Board of Public Health.
Board of Visitors, Observatory.
Chief Engineer for Railway Construction.
Chief Inspector of Explosives.
Chief Inspector of Factories, Workrooms and Shops.
Coal Miners' Accidents Relief Fund.
Committee of Public Accounts.
Conservator of Forests.
Council of Judges.
Council of Public Education.
Department of Agriculture.
Department of Crown Lands and Survey.
Government Astronomer.
General Manager of State Coal Mines.
Indeterminate Sentences Board.
Inspector of Charitable Institutions.
Inspector-General of the Insane.
Inspector of Inebriates' Institutions.
Inspector of Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools.
Inspector-General of Penal Establishments, Gaols, and Reformatory Prisons.
Inspector-General of Savings Banks.
Lands Purchase and Management Board.
Licenses Reduction Board.
Marine Board of Victoria.
Minister of Public Instruction.
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways.
Public Service Commissioner.
Registrar of Friendly Societies.
Railways Commissioners.
Secretary for Mines.
State Rivers and Water Supply Commission.
Trustees of the Public Library, Museums, and National Gallery.
Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University.
Public Service List.
Accounts of the Trustees of Agricultural Colleges and the Council of Agricul-
tural Education.
76 MEMOEIAL VOLUME
The Budget.
Returns under the Banks and Currency Act 1890, the Companies Act 1890, and
the Electric Light and Power Act 1896.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
Statement of Expenditure imder the Constitution Statute.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Treasurer's Statement and Report of the Auditor-General.
Determinations of Wages Boards.
The Law relating to Factories and Shops in Victoria.
Agricultural Journal (monthly).
Register of Teachers and Register of Schools.
Quarterly Returns of Yield of Goldfields.
Memoirs and Bulletins of the Geological Survey.
Vaccination Progress Report.
Bank Liabilities and Assets.
(3) Reports of Local Bodies:
Annual Reports of the Melbourne Harbour Trust Commission.
Aimual Reports of the Fire Brigades Board.
Annual Statements of Municipal and Shire Councils.
Geelong Municipal Waterworks Trust.
Hospitals.
Report and Statement of Tramways Trust.
Statement of Accounts of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works,
and Report,
(c) Queensland. — (1) Publicaiions by Government Statistician:
The Queensland Official Year Book, 1901.
The Census of 1901.
A.B.C. of Queensland Statistics, 1905 to 1913.
Vital Statistics (annual), 1901 to 1912; and monthly issues to September, 1913.
Statistical Registers, 1901 to 1912.
Annual Reports on Agricultural, Dairying, and Pastoral Statistics,
(2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of the:
Agent-General.
Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations.
Chief Protector of Aboriginals.
Chief Lispector of Machinery and Scaffolding.
Commissioner of Public Health.
Commissioner of Income Tax.
Commissioner of Police.
Commissioner for Railways.
Comptroller-General of Prisons.
Curator of Intestate Estates.
Department of Agriculture and Stock.
Department of Public Lands.
Department of Public Works.
Director of Forests.
Director of Labour and Chief Inspector of Factories and Shops.
AUSTRALIA 77
Engineer for Harbovirs and Rivers.
Government Analyst.
Government Central Sugar Mills.
Government Life Insurance and Annuity Business.
Government Resident at Thursday Island.
Government Savings Bank.
Hydraulic Engineer on Water Supply.
Immigration Agent.
Inspector of Hospitals for the Insane.
Inspector of Orphanages.
Institute of Tropical Medicine.
Manager of the Government Savings Bank.
Marine Department.
Medical Inspector of Schools.
Officer in Charge, Government Relief.
Official Trustee in Insolvency.
Public Service Board.
Registrar of Friendly Societies, Building Societies, and Trade Unions.
Secretary for Public Instruction.
State Children's Department.
Trustees of the Agricultural Bank.
Trustees of the National Art Gallery.
Trustees of. the Public Library.
UndeivSecretary for Mines.
University of Queensland.
Workers' Dwellings Board.
Blue Book.
Public Service Lists.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
Public Accounts and Report of the Auditor-General.
Treasurer's Financial Statement and Tables relating thereto.
Determinations of Wages Boards.
Agricultmal Journal (monthly).
The Queensland Sugar Industry, 1913.
Reports of the Geological Survey.
Monthly Reports on Mining, Crown Lands, etc.
(3) Reports and Statements of Local Bodies:
Brisbane Board of Waterworks.
Bimdaberg Harbour Board.
Engineer for Harbours and Rivers.
Hospitals, Sanatoria, Asylums, etc.
Annual Statements of Municipalities.
Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board,
(d) South Australia. — (1) Publicaiions by the Under-Secretary and Government
Statist:
Statistical Registers, 1901 to 1911, and 1912 (parts).
78 MEMORIAL VOLUME
MontMy Returns of Births and Deaths, 1901 to September, 1913.
OflScial Year Book of South Australia, 1912 and 1913.
The Census of 1901.
Blue Book.
Statistical Summary of South Australia from its (oimdation, 1836 to 1910.
Annual Reports on Manufactories and Works, Live Stock, Wheat Harvest,
Agricultural and Viticultural Statistics.
(2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of the:
Actuary on Friendly Societies 1900-4, and 1905-9.
Agent-General.
Audit-Commissioner.
Chief Inspector of Factories.
Chief Inspector of Fisheries.
Chief Inspector of Oyster Fisheries.
Chief Inspector of Stock.
Commissioner of Police.
Commissioner of Railways.
Conmiissioners of the National Park.
Department of Public Works.
Department of Woods and Forests.
Destitute Board.
Gaols and Prisons.
Government Astronomer.
Government Geologist.
Government Resident of Northern Territory to 1909 (subsequent reports to
Commonwealth Government).
Governors of the Public Library, Museum, and Art Gallery.
Hospital for the Insane.
Marine Board.
Minister for Agriculture.
Minister for Education.
Public Service Superannuation Board.
Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.
Registrar of Trade Unions.
State Children's Council.
Smrveyop-General.
Trustees of the Savings Bank.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions.
Conferences, etc.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Financial Statement of the Treasurer and appendices relating thereto.
Determinations of Wages Boards.
Mining Operations: Halt-Yearly Reviews, 1904 to 1913.
Records and Reports of Geological Survey.
Journal of the Department of Agriculture (monthly).
(3) Reports and Statements of Local Bodies:
Hospitals.
Schools of Mines and Industries.
AUSTRALIA 79
Fire Brigades Boards.
Municipal Tramways Trust.
City of Adelaide Year Book.
Municipalities.
East Torrens County Board of Health,
(e) Western Australia. — (1) Publications by Government Statistician:
The Census of 1901.
Statistical Registers, 1901 to 1911 and 1912 (parts).
Monthly Statistical Abstracts, 1901 to September, 1913.
Year Book of Western Australia, 1900-3, 1902-4, 1905 (part).
Quarterly and Annual Reports on Population and Vital Statistics.
Monthly Return of Vital Statistics.
Crop and Live Stock Returns.
Blue Book.
Statistical View of 84 years' progress in Western Australia, 1829 to 1912.
Comparative Statistics, 1890 to 1912.
Annual Reports on Agricultural, etc.. Statistics.
Report on Interstate Trade Returns for the Two Years 1911 and 1912.
(2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of the:
Aborigines Department.
Agent-General.
Agricultural Bank.
Art Galleries.
Chief Inspector of Explosives.
Chief Inspector of Fisheries.
Commissioner of Police.
Commissioner of Railways.
Conmiissioner of Taxation.
Comptroller-General of Prisons.
Department of Agriculture.
Department of Lands and Surveys.
Department of Mines.
Department of Public Works.
Department of Woods and Forests.
Education Department.
Geological Survey.
Government Analyst.
Government Astronomer.
Government Labour Bureau.
Government Savings Bank.
Harbour and Light Department.
Inspector-General of Insane.
Lands Titles Department.
Museum and Art Gallery.
Public Library.
Principal Medical Officer on Medical, Health, Factories, Early Closing, Vac-
cination and Quarantine.
Public Service Commissioner.
80 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Registrar of Friendly Societies.
Registrar of Friendly Societies in connection with Industrial Conciliation and
Arbitration, and Trade Unions.
Stock Department.
Superintendent of Charities and Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory
Schools.
Surveyor-General.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Public Accounts and Report of the Auditor-General.
Agricultural Journal (monthly).
Reports of proceedings before Boards of Conciliation and Court of Arbitration.
Bulletins of the Department of State Medicine and Public Health.
Reports and Bulletins of the Geological Survey.
Government Savings Bank, Comparative Return (monthly) .
Western Australia, 1912.
(3) Ueparts and Statements of Local Bodies:
Cemetery Boards.
Fire Brigades.
Fremantle Harbour Trust Commissioners.
Fremantle Municipal Tramways and Electric Lighting Board.
Metropolitan Waterworks Board.
Municipalities, Road Boards, and Boards of Health.
Public Hospitals.
Waterworks Boards (country).
(f) Tasmania. — (1) Publications by Government Statistician:
The Census of 1901.
Statistical Registers, 1901 to 1911-12.
Reports on Vital Statistics and Migration (annual), 1901 to 1911; and monthly
issues to October, 1912.
Reports on Agricultural and Live Stock Statistics, 1901 to 1911-12.
Statistical Summaries, 1901 to 1910-11.
Gold Yield for 1908 and previous 10 years.
Annual Reports on Agricultural Production, etc.. Statistics.
The Statistician's Pocket Year Book of Tasmania, 1913.
^2) Departmental Papers, Annual Reports of the:
Agent-General.
Agriculttu-al Bank of Tasmania.
Charitable Grants Department.
Chief Inspector of Factories.
Chief Inspector of Stock.
Commissioner of Taxes.
Department of Agriculture.
Department of Education.
Department of Mines.
Department of Neglected Children.
Department of Public Health.
AUSTRALIA 81
Engineer-in-Chief of Public Works.
Explosives Department.
General Manager of Government Railways.
Hobart and Launceston Gaols.
Inspector of Machinery.
Lands and Survey Department.
Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Police Department.
Public Library.
Public Service Board.
Recorder of Titles.
Registrar of Friendly Societies and Trade Unions.
Savings Bank.
University of Tasmania.
Public Service List.
The Budget.
The Estimiates of Revenue and Expenditure.
Parliamentary Papers (miscellaneous); Reports of Committees, Commissions,
Conferences, etc.
Public Debts Sinking Fund.
Report of the Auditor-General.
Financial Statement of the Treasurer.
Wages Boards Determinations.
Geological Survey Bulletins.
Progress of the Mineral Industry (quarterly).
(3) Reports and Statements of Local Bodies:
Country Libraries.
Fire Brigade Board.
Harbour Trusts.
Hobart Drainage Board.
Hospitals.
Industrial Schools.
Life Assurance Societies.
Marine Boards.
Municipalities.
AUSTRIA
THE fflSTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF GOVERN-
MENT STATISTICS IN AUSTRIA
By Dr. Robebt Meter*
Privy Councillor, former Minister of Finance, late President of the Imperial and
Royal Central Statistical Commission
I. The Development of Government Statistix;s in Austria up
to the Establishment of the Imperial and Royal Central
Statistical Commission {1863)
The beginnings of government statistics in Austria extend
far back into the past.
Apart from the periodical commercial, financial, and mil-
itary surveys, made in the reigns of Maximilian I and Charles
V, which were very imperfect technically, our interest is
especially attracted in the more remote period by the at-
tempts of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, whose aim it was
to ascertain the movement of the population by censuses
varying in extent.
The rescripts of October 13, 1753, and of January 7 and
February 16, 1754, ordered a double census of the real, i.e.,
present, population according to sex, age and citizenship.
By the rescripts of April 24 and May 22, 1762, a regular
investigation of the movement of the population was insti-
tuted.
The imperial charter of March 10, 1770, ordained a num-
bering of all dwellings, both inhabited and uninhabited, as
well as a description of the whole native population, with a
detailed section referring to the male sex only. The charter
of December 17, 1777, at last ordered a detailed survey of
both sexes, an inventory of the beasts of burden, and that
a record of the data ascertained should be kept in the so-
called "census books."
But it was not until the separation of the imperial patri-
*Dr. Meyer died in May, 1914, shortly after the compilation of this article. — ^Ed.
86 MEMORIAL VOLUME
monial dominions from the Roman-German Empire and
their inclusion, constitutionally and administratively, in
the Empire of Austria, that a number of government
measures were brought to a head, which had in view the
organization of continuous statistics in all possible branches
of the administration. First of all by the charter (patent)
of October 25, 1804, and then, on the same basis, by the
imperial decree of September 2, 1817, the Emperor Francis I
ordained conscription (the conscript system) for nearly
all the countries united under his rule.
The chief aim of conscription was the dedication of qual-
ified individuals to military service. By this enactment
dwelling-houses were counted and numbered; a survey of
the population, with its increase and departures, was made;
a census of the male population was taken and individuals
were classified; lastly a census was made of the various
kinds of live stock. Apart from some unimportant changes,
the census system in the monarchy now remained stationary
till the fifties of the nineteenth century.
The efforts of Konferenzrat Baron von Baldacci and of
Count O'Donnel, president of the exchequer, led Emperor
Francis to suggest the estabhshment of a statistical depart-
ment in the exchequer.
This was done in a document addressed to Prince Kohary,
vice-president of the exchequer, the duties of the suggested
department having special reference to agricultural statistics.
The plan failed, however, owing to the war of the ensuing
years, and was not taken up again until after the Congress
of Vienna (1815). A nimiber of private statistical works
on the whole monarchy or separate parts of it contributed
essentially to the furtherance of the movement, especially
those by de Luca, Baron liechtenstern, R. von Cbckelberghe,
Demian, Schaller, MiiUner, Schwartner, Sartori, Benigniv,
Mildenberg and others.
It is remarkable that the initiative was not taken by the
central authorities, but by the provinces, owing to a scheme
thoroughly worked out by the Stjo-ian Councillor (Guber-
AUSTRIA 87
nialrat) SchSttl R. von Schinnern. The deliberations which
now followed within the pale of the Council of State, the
result of which was influenced considerably by Baron von
Liechtenstein's indefatigable advocacy, led to the imperial
decree of February 3, 1819, ordaining the establishment of
a topographical oflBce of statistics in connection with the
Council of State, State Councillor Baron von Schwizen
being the prospective president of the same. However, at
that time the administration had apparently not made the
necessary provision for the efficiency of the department, so
Emperor Francis found himself compelled to repeal his
decree. In the next ten years we hear but little of govern-
ment statistics. The progress of statistics in the univer-
sities and the urgent need of practice made a statistical
survey of the separate departments of the administration
more and more desirable.
Baron von Baldacci, who was then at the head of the
Directorate General of Accounts (Generalrechnungsdirek-
torium), succeeded by his efforts in persuading Emperor
Francis to grant, by an order in Council of April 6, 1829,
the establishment of a regular administrative statistical
service, the management of which was entrusted to the
above-mentioned. He incorporated the Bureau of Sta-
tistics (created for the necessary work), with the Auditing
Board of Control (RechnungskontroUbehorde), and assigned
the accomplishment of the work to Baron von Metzburg,
vice-president of the Directorate General of Accounts.
Metzburg succeeded in organizing a regular annual report
of the government departments concerned, which was com-
piled in a tabular form in the Tables of Statistics. These
Tables, which included the year 1828 in the first set, were
the authoritative Austrian statistics until 1865. At first
they were kept strictly secret and reserved exclusively for
government purposes, but by degrees they were made acces-
sible to larger circles. Baron von Metzburg, the author of
the. Tables, intended to add a scientific appendix, and for
his purpose he wrote a Manual of Statistics for the year
88 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1830, which, however, he was not allowed to publish. Full
publicity did not come until it was brought about by the
storms of 1848.
It was not long before the administrative statistical serv-
ice was found insufficient to do justice to the continually
increasing demands on the government statistics. After
Metzburg's death. Baron von Kiibeck, then president of
the Directorate General of Accounts, strove to mould the
department into a suitable form.
Owing to his influence the Emperor Ferdinand I issued
an imperial decree on March 31, 1840, creating a special
office with a permanent staff. This office was directly sub-
ordinate to the chair of the Directorate General of Accounts,
and its duty was to collect, investigate and compile statis-
tical data. After it had been temporarily managed by
R. V. Lucan, councillor of finance, and Hopfgartner, sec-
retary to the court, Karl Czoernig became head of the board.
Czoernig's professional education, great knowledge and
indefatigable energy enabled him to create a new era in the
history of government statistics in the monarchy.
He paved the way for a regular scientific treatment of
figures, and he not only turned to account the data from
official sources, but also worked out a system of control by
which private estimates could be made use of for the pur-
poses of government statistics.
The census system became general by the law of March
23, 1857. By this law the census was considered exclu-
sively as the object of political administrative activity; a
definite term day was fixed, but only the native population
was to be included in the census. The results of the census
were published in the Statistical Survey of Population and
Live Stock, According to the Census of October 31, 1857.
This was published by the Home Department.
Czoernig's work was of especial importance for the better
understanding of ethnographic and industrial conditions in
the monarchy. His efforts to interest larger circles in the
results of government statistics ought also to be emphasized.
AUSTRIA 89
A small Manual of Statistics was published for daily use
only. The Intelligence of the Department of Statistics was
established as an organ of larger extent.
77. The Organization of the Central Statistical Commission
In spite of all the success that had been achieved, the
lack of internal organization in government statistics was
being felt more and more, as was also the need of a proper
combination with science. New bases for the constitution
and administration of the monarchy were created by the
October Patent (1860) and the February Patent (1861).
At this time the direction of government statistics was in
the hands of the Head Auditing OflSce (Oberste Rechnungs-
controUbehorde), after being temporarily administered by
the Board of Trade.
Count Mercandin, as president of the auditing office, now
took preparatory steps to follow the example of foreign coun-
tries by creating a Central Statistical Commission for the
monarchy. The statutes for the new institution were
worked out very carefully, and they received imperial ratifi-
cation by the decree of January 31, 1863. The monarchy
was the twelfth state to establish a Central Statistical Com-
mission.
The statutes provided that the Central Commission should
furnish the central departments of the administration with
the necessary information regarding conditions at home and
abroad. This information was to be given in as concise and
complete a form as possible. It thus behooves the Com-
mission to execute orders from headquarters, to give advice
on questions submitted to it, and to strive in every way to
bring about united cobperation between the various depart-
ments of the government and the statistical department.
The Central Commission has, furthermore, to draw up and
carry out the plan for government statistics for the whole
empire. In order to do this it must consider formularies for
ascertaining statistical data and must determine these in
agreement with the respective central departments; it must
90 MEMORIAL VOLUME
collect and examine the statistical materials for all depart-
ments that have been gained on this basis or otherwise
procured by the central departments; it must direct the
compilation and publication of these materials.
The Central Commission consists of the following mem-
bers: the President, one representative of each office of the
central government (including the head auditing office),
the secretary and the clerk. Men who have distinguished
themselves in science or political economy may become
honorary members of the commission.
The imperial decree of December 22, 1870, granted the
Commission the right to appoint corresponding members,
provided that their election be approved by the minister
of public worship and instruction.
The Emperor reserves the right of appointing the Presi-
dent; the representatives of the central departments (and
their substitutes) are appointed by the chiefs of the respect-
ive departments, while the honorary members are appointed
by the minister of pubhc worship and instruction, upon
presentation by the Central Commission.
The Central Commission appoints the secretary and clerk
from the staff of the Bureau of the I. R. Central Statistical
Commission. The Central Commission is empowered to call
in professional men to their deKberations or to ask their
advice. The regular meetings of the Commission are held
once a month; the President may call special meetings.
The central departments of the government are kept in-
formed orally by suitable representatives, instructions are
given on one hand and abstracts of the minutes on the other;
but on more important occasions both instructions and
reports are given by correspondence. Representatives of
the central departments must give the President notice of
matters on which the departments desire the Commission's
advice; the President will then bring them forward for dis-
cussion by adoption in the order of the day.
The Commission was incorporated with the Board of
Trade for a short time, but, by the imperial decree of August
AUSTRIA 91
28, 1870, it became subordinate to the Board of Public
Worship and Instruction. This was done in view of the fact
that, owing to its composition and its sphere of activity,
the Commission was well adapted to solve problems, and
therefore should be under this department, just as the
government institutions of art and science were. The com-
bination that was created in this way had proved its effi-
ciency and offers the best guarantee for continuous progress
in the scientific work of the Central Commission.
The board of directors of government statistics continued
to be the executive organ of the Commission until 1884,
when it was abolished and replaced by the Bureau, this
being directly subordinate to the President of the Central
Commission.
According to the procedure laid down by the statutes
(which still subsist, and rightly so), the business of the
Central Statistical Commission is managed by the President
and his bureau, by the whole body of members, and by
special committees.
The President presides at the general meetings, opens and
closes them and conducts the discussions and voting.
He appoints the special committees and has a vote in each;
he despatches x^gent or less important documents himself
and assigns the others to individual members or commit-
tees; these committees may be already in existence or may
be formed for the purpose.
The President represents the Commission outside; he
therefore signs all documents issued by it with the exception
of reports and abstracts of the minutes. He must always
be well informed with regard to the work of the Bureau of
the Central Statistical Commission and of its individual
officers; he has to provide the books and cards required for
the work of the Central Statistical Commission and for the
library of the Bureau of the Central Commission; the ex-
penditure for these must be in the fixed appropriation. The
President also negotiates the exchange of pubUcations with
foreign bureaus of statistics. In case of his absence, the
92 MEMORIAL VOLUME
President is represented by the regular member of the Com-
mission next in rank. The secretary formulates the resolu-
tions of the Central Commission, attends to the correspond-
ence under the President's supervision, superintends the
conduct of legal business — which is attended to by the staff
of the Bureau of the Central Commission — ^he invites mem-
bers of the general assembly and of special committees to
their sessions by informing them, in due time, of the order
of the day arranged by the President; he superintends the
preparation of the minutes and composes the abstracts of
the same, which are intended for pubUcation in the official
gazette of Vienna.
The clerk prepares the minutes under the secretary's
supervision and assists the latter in his other duties.
A majority of representatives of the central departments
constitutes a quorum in the general assembly. Every mem-
ber is free to make a motion; he may also bring forward
subjects for discussion which are not in the order of the day,
this being done by putting questions to the President.
However, no debate takes place on the answer given, unless
it be a case of recognized urgency. As a rule the debate is
not based on a resolution itself, but rather on the report that
is to be made concerning it. An absolute majority of the
members present is generally considered decisive. The
President only gives a casting vote whenever the votes are
equal on both sides. When the subject under discussion
belongs to the jurisdiction of a department, no motion may
be made on it in the absence of the proper representative;
if the representative be present, but in the minority, he has
the right to consult his chief once more, without whose
consent the resolution in question cannot take effect. The
assembly determines the manner and extent of the Bureau's
work and gives instructions with regard to it. It has author-
ity to estimate the number of officials required for the work
and to procure whatever materials may be needed for it.
Special committees are formed from the general assembly
for the elaboration of extensive subjects or to give an
AUSTRIA 93
on various matters; these committees may call in profes-
sional men to their deliberations.
Three members of a special committee are sufficient for a
quorum, provided that at least one of these be also a mem-
ber of the general assembly. Each special committee
chooses a reporter from its own number, who has to present
the resolutions of the committee to the general assembly.
Honorary and corresponding members are proposed by
ballot which must give a majority of at least two thirds of
those voting.
Every regular and honorary member of the Commission
is entitled to propose corresponding members, and the num-
ber of corresponding members is unUmited.
The corresponding members are expected to advance the
interests of statistics and to give advice when called upon
to do so; as far as circumstances permit they are also required
to collect and compile statistical data or to stimulate and
negotiate such work; lastly, they are required to take part
in any deliberations to which they may be invited. Corre-
sponding members are allowed the use of the hbrary and the
documents of the Central Commission besides twenty five
copies of their own works, published by the Commission.
Apart from the President's office, the hbrary, the office
of the Smithsonian Institute and the pubUshing office
(Expedite), the present organization of the Bureau is divided
into the following eight departments:
Dept. I. International statistics.
Agricultural statistics.
Editorial staff of the Austrian Manual of
Statistics, the Statistical Monthly, and the
Statistical Intelligence.
Dept. II. The Census, statistics of the changes of popu-
lation, office of topographical statistics.
Dept. III. Agrarian statistics.
Dept. IV. Statistics of organizations, associations, banks,
savings banks, and trade.
94 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Dept. V. Statistics of finance, and of the autonomous
administration .
Dept. VI. Judicial statistics.
Dept. VII. Religious and educational statistics.
Dept. Vni. Health and foreign trade statistics.
III. The Development of the Central Statistical Commission
It was a great advantage to the Central Statistical Com-
mission to have Charles, Baron von Czoernig, as its first
president (1863-1865).
The Commission owes its stability and the great results
attained during the very first years of its existence to
Czoernig's personality and reputation.
Czoernig continued at first to publish the Tables of
Statistics, and besides these he published complete govern-
ment statistics in a condensed form in the Statistical Annual.
After the abolition of the Tables in 1865, the Annual may
be considered authoritative. In order to familiarize govern-
ment officials with the peculiarities of the statistical service
and to educate them to be reliable collaborators, he estab-
lished practical courses, which were given by professional
men in the offices of the Commission during the winter term
of the years 1864 to 1868. Czoernig was obliged to leave
the service owing to a serious illness brought on by over-
exertion.
His place as head of the office was taken by Glanz Ritter
von Eicha, councillor of state, who was next in rank in the
Commission, and who held the position for nearly five years
(1865-1870). We owe the law of March 29, 1869, to his
tireless energy. By this law the Austrian census system
was put on a thoroughly modern footing, and it is still in
force.
The law assigned the taking of the census to the Home
Department, but the comparison of the sum total for the
various countries and the whole monarchy, as well as the
compilation for administrative and scientific purposes, was
reserved for the Central Commission.
AUSTRIA 95
The primary collection of data and the compilation of
the same by townships, parishes and districts, were to be
undertaken in a decentralized manner. The actual popula-
tion was to be ascertained. December 31 was fixed as term-
day. The vocational section and residential conditions were
only taken in outUne. An enumeration of physical infirm-
ities and of domestic animals was included in the census.
It was now enacted that the census should be taken at the
end of every year ending with "0."
The later development of the system shows remarkable
progress. In 1880 new data were added to the census,
recording extra earnings, the colloquial language, the knowl-
edge of reading and writing, and the number of mentally
deficient persons (lunatics and idiots).
The Census of 1890 shows a considerable extension of
vocational statistics as well as an extensive record of land
and house property and Uving conditions. The first esti-
mates for household and family statistics were obtained by
inquiries into the composition of the households in each
dwelling. The figures were worked out by an electric adding
machine.
The Census of 1900 was distinguished by a comprehensive
survey of dwellings, more or less extensive according to the
size of the places. A census of the unemployed was also
taken in connection with this.
The Census of 1900 made it possible to have a general
vocational section, in which the relation to the chief vocation
was included, not only for the day on which the census was
taken, but also for the end of 1907. By this means valuable
materials were obtained for judging of the social conditions
arising from a change of calling. There was also a new
record made with reference to those practising an extra
calling, either simultaneofusly or alternately with their chief
vocation.
The statistical survey of houses was extended still
further.
The following figures, showing the expenditure of the
96 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Commission from decade to decade, will give an idea of the
increased work of the census :
1869 crowns 39 .408
1880 crowns 51.876
1890 crowns 617.085
1900 crowns 794.205
1910 crowns 1,143.000
At the busiest time of the work of the census, the Central
Commission employs 5 draughtsmen, 8 computing ofl5-
cials, 3 permanent and 380 extra assistants, and lastly 12
occasional assistants. Ten adding machines are used, which
are worked by electricity, also 200 punching machines,
worked by haoid, for punching the cards.
The first of the above-mentioned censuses was published
in the Austrian Census of December 31, 1869. Reports
from those following are given in Austrian Statistics. Since
1890 the preliminary results have also been published as
quickly as possible.
A Complete Topographical Register of the Kingdoms and
Provinces represented in the Imperial Senate, according to
the Census of December 31, 1880, was published, giving a
complete record of the political divisions of the state terri-
tory, and a classification of parishes and townships. This
work was continued under the same title in connection with
the Census of 1890; in 1900 it appeared as the General
Topographical Directory, in 1910 as a General Directory
of Townships and Parishes.
The Special Register for the Kingdoms and Provinces
represented in the Imperial Senate was published after the
Census of 1880. It consisted of 13 volumes and comprised
all the imperial dominions except Dalmatia. It is indis-
pensable as a guide for all practical purposes of public and
private administration and is also invaluable to the geog-
rapher, philologer and historian.
In connection with the Census of 1900 a Municipal Lexicon
was published for each of the 14 Austrian dominions; this
AUSTRIA 97
was on a much broader basis than the Special Register.
It contains a record of the various institutions provided
for in each community, employing the usual abbreviations;
it also records the registered and taxable municipalities
of each revenue district separately.
This work was found too costly, and an improved Special
Register was again published after the Census of 1910.
During the time that the department was under Glanz'
management, statistics of organizations were collected, and
a detailed census of the public schools were taken. The
school census was repeated every 5 years until 1885, and
thenceforth every 10 years; it was published independently
in 1870, 1873 and 1876. The following censuses appeared
in the authoritative publications. An independent publica-
tion was also issued for the years 1890 and 1900, which was
called Plans for National and City Schools. Since 1900
the public school census has been discontinued. After
Glanz' retirement, the management of the department was
continually changing at short intervals.
First of all Baron Louis von HohenbUhel, councillor of
public instruction, was appointed president (1870-1872).
After him the management was undertaken by Franz Ritter
von Astrenberg, councillor in the defence department, then
it passed into the hands of Dr. Adolf Ficker, councillor of
public worship and instruction.
Ficker had been splendidly prepared for the work by his
long years of service on the board of directors of govern-
ment statistics. We owe to him the establishment of the
scientific periodical, The Monthly Journal of Statistics,
which took the place of the Intelligence in 1875.
The readjustment of political relations with Hungary
limited the jurisdiction of the Central Commission (1867).
Ficker succeeded in publishing an official manual of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, in which he was assisted by
Councillor Karl Keleti, director of the Hungarian Provincial
Office of Statistics. This manual comprised the period
98 MEMORIAL VOLUME
from 1867 to 1876; it was continued, under Inama, for the
decade 1877-1886.
Among the larger separate official pubUcations which did
not appear in the above-mentioned periodicals were the
following: Statistics of Judaism, by G. A. Schimmer; The
Compilation of the Periodical Press, by J. Winckler; Period-
ical Health Statistics for 1873 to 1879; Statistical Refer-
ences on the Rate of Interest on Mortgages for 1879. A
process of disintegration unfortunately began in Picker's
time. The central departments now found it necessary to
have their statistics procured under their own supervision;
this led to the organization of sections of statistics, whose
sphere of activity was gradually extended by taking over
some of the work formerly done by the Central Commission.
After Picker's death in 1880, Schonwald von Bingenheim,
head of the Supreme Court of Finance (Oberster Rechnungs-
hof), became director of the office, and two years later
Councillor Lorenz von Liburnau of the department of
agriculture. The latter deserves special credit for intro-
ducing statistics of harvests and cultivation. In the year
1881, Charles Theodore von Inama-Sternegg, professor of
political economy at Prague University, became director of
government statistics, and three years later he was appointed
President (the fourth) of the Central Commission. This
distinguished man not only possessed remarkable profes-
sional ability, but he was also gifted with an abundance of
youthful energy, and his appointment marks the beginning
of a new and brilliant era in the history of Austrian govern-
ment statistics. As a scholar and a statesman, a teacher
and a leader in movements for the welfare of humanity,
his influence bore rich fruit in many directions.
The intellectual and personal relations he had won in his
large sphere of activity were of the greatest value to the
dignity and position of the office which he directed for nearly
a quarter of a century. During this time the department
itself reaped with him the results of his extensive and suc-
cessful hfe work. Inama changed the board of directors
AUSTRIA
of government statistics into a bureau of the Central' Gd^-
mission; in doing so he created the preliminary condition
that was indispensable for the accomplishment of unified
work with a definite aim. Then he went to work on the
extension of government statistics. Nearly every branch
of government statistics bears the stamp of his reforms,
and he opened up countless fields of scientific research by
his indefatigable energy.
He paid especial attention to statistics of population and
agriculture. He also brought about the inclusion of trade,
dwelling, family and household statistics in the census and
the central revision of these by means of an electrical adding
machine; he created statistics of foreign trade, and improved
emigration statistics. Under his direction the first — ^and so
far the only — ^agricultm-al and industrial census was taken
in 1902; this was published in the Austrian Statistics.
Inama had data on agricultural wages collected, and created
statistics of landed property, etc.
These Austrian Statistics now replaced the Manual of
Statistics as the authoritative Austrian statistics. They
present the separate branches of government statistics in
their natural sequence, compiled analytically and numeric-
ally according to the subject matter. A condensed, purely
tabular survey of the collective government statistics is also
given now in the Austrian Manual of Statistics which ap-
pears annually.
At the instigation and with the assistance of the depart-
ment of agriculture the Information about the Whole
Domain of Agriculture was established for agricultural pur-
poses. At first this was a weekly publication, but it now
appears monthly. Fuller details will be given later of the
organization for the cooperation of the body politic with self-
governing bodies in statistical matters. This resulted from
Inama's efforts and led to the publication of the Statistical
Manual of the Autonomous Provinces (yearly) and the
Austrian Municipal Register (every two years).
The Manual of Associations (1892) should be mentioned
100 MEMORIAL VOLUME
among the independent publications of Inama's time. He
contrived to combine his official position with his academic
duties in a way that was invaluable to the department.
Most of the colleagues whom he needed to carry out his
great reforms were obtained from his seminar.
Inama was succeeded by his colleague Francis Ritter von
Juraschek. Under him considerable progress was made in
statistics of population, agricultural, and electoral statistics
(for which the calling of qualified electors was investigated).
In connection with agricultural statistics the work, Grain
in International Commerce, was published, largely with
Juraschek's collaboration. By order of the Public Works
Department a census was taken of tenement houses (gemein-
nuzige Kleinwohnungsanlagen), which was published in 1910.
In Juraschek's time the preliminary steps were taken for a
census of the institutions and organizations for the protec-
tion and care of young people and children; this was pub-
lished in a Register for Lower and Upper Austria, Salzburg
and Styria, in the year 1913.
Juraschek sought to popularize statistics by means of the
Statistical Intelligence, which gave a synopsis of the most
recent statistical data twice monthly.
This energetic man died suddenly in the midst of his
labors on the Census of 1910. Then Councillor Charles
Eisler Ritter von Eiserhort directed the department for a
while, after which Dr. Robert Meyer took charge of it.
Dr. Meyer was head of the I. R. Department of Finance
and honorary professor of political economy at Vienna Uni-
versity, and had been a regular member of the Central
Commission since 1897, having represented the Department
of Finance.
Meyer at once took in hand the preparation of the Census
of 1910, but shortly after its completion he was called away
from this sphere of activity to the Crown Council (Rat der
Krone) ia order to become Minister of Finance.
One of Inama's pupils. Dr. Ernest Mischler, professor of
statistics and administrative law at Gratz University, was
AUSTRIA 101
appointed as Meyer's successor. He first of all took hold
of the compilation of the census, then turned his attention
to the reform and reconstruction of official publications.
Mischler's aim was to render the pubKcation of the Austrian
Statistics and other statistical works as expeditious as
possible.
The new Publikationstype was turned to good account in
the Manual of Austrian Legal Statistics and the Live-
stock Lexicon, which deals with the live-stock census of
the year 1910. He now made good use of the executive
ability, which had been proved in his previous position, for
the benefit of the Central Commission. One of the impor-
tant acts of his administration of the office was to create a
special department to take charge of agricultural statistics.
Mischler died suddenly after holding the office for two years;
thus many of his plans of reform were left unaccomplished.
In February, 1913, Dr. Robert Meyer, in compliance with
the wish of the government, became President of the Central
Commission for the second time.
IV. The Statistical Offices of the Central Departments
As has already been mentioned, the Central Statistical
Commission is not the only producer of government sta-
tistics.
The separate departments of the government manage
their own statistical work in various degrees. Li most of
the central departments there is a special office for dealing
with statistical memoranda.
In the Board of Trade a separate office was created as
far back as 1872. This office took charge of the industrial,
commercial and foreign statistics, which were published in
the Statements of Austria's Trade. This publication was
originally started by the Board of Government Statistics,
and was then carried on by the Central Statistical Com-
mission.
The Central Commission made a special publication of the
Review of Imports and Exports for the years 1863 to 1870.
102 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The provisional results were published in the Austria, a
periodical which was first issued by the Board of Trade in
1849 as a daily paper; in 1856 it was changed to a weekly,
and in 1883 to a monthly. The Austria was the archives
of regulations and statistics in the Departments of Industry,
Trade and Navigation; but in 1901 it was merged in the
Archives of Austrian Political Economy. These in turn
were replaced by the Zollkompass, which appeared in 1910
and in which the commercial conditions of the various states
are dealt vdth in turn.
In 1877 The Permanent Commission on Commercial
Values was founded on the model of the French Commis-
sion Permanente des Valeurs. It is the business of this
commission to determine yearly, by valuation, the average
commercial value of the imports and exports for the past
year. In 1890 the statistics of foreign trade were thoroughly
reformed and the whole matter passed into the hands of the
statistical department of the Board of Trade. The latter
now publishes the statistics of foreign trade annually in the
Statistics of Foreign Trade for the District included in the
Customs Union (VertragszoUgebiet) of both states of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This is a very detailed and
comprehensive work, consisting of four large volumes deal-
ing with: a. Special Trade; b. Freight and Transit Trade;
c. Trade with the Separate Countries of Departure and
Destination; d. Ocean and Harbor Trade.
Monthly statistical reports also appear in the Statistical
Review of Foreign Trade for the District included in the
Customs Union, etc.
Since 1900 the statistics have been published annually
under the title of Statistics of Interstate Trade between
the Kingdoms and Provinces represented in the Imperial
Senate and the Provinces of the Holy Hungarian Crown.
Monthly statements are also published in the Monthly
Reference of Interstate Trade.
The first volume of the annual publication gives a detailed
historical report of the whole district. In 1901 a Perma-
AUSTRIA 103
nent Commission on Interstate Trade (analogous to the
other permanent commission founded in 1877) was estab-
lished for the purpose of estimating the amount of trade
for interstate trade statistics.
The Oflfice of Statistics for Foreign and Interstate Trade
in the Board of Trade is at present under the management
of Aulic Councillor Demel Hitter von Elswehr. In con-
nection with this oflfice an annual publication has been issued
since 1901, entitled Foreign and Interstate Trade of the
Kingdoms and Provinces represented in the Imperial Senate
and the Provinces of the Holy Hungarian Crown. This
periodical shows Austria's and Hungary's share of the foreign
trade separately, and the total trade of each. This is done
by a comparison of the Foreign Trade Statistics of the
Customs Union, the Interstate Trade Statistics, and the
Hungarian Statistics of Foreign Trade. This oflfice has also
begun to publish periodically instructions for the composi-
tion and compilation of data for the purposes of trade
statistics in Bases of Statistics of Foreign Trade.
Two Outlines of Comparative Statistics for a Series of Years
were published for the years 1903 to 1907 and 1905 to 1909.
The Statistics of Navigation and Maritime Trade in Aus-
trian Harbors is published annually by order of the Board
of Trade on the basis of official data from the Chamber of
Commerce and Industry of Trieste. Pertinent data are also
published by the Marine Board in the Navigazione Austro-
Ungarica all'Estero and in the Annuario Marittimo.
In 1898 an office for labor statistics was installed in the
Board of Trade, whose task it was to collect and compile
labor statistics for the purpose of economical and social
legislation and administration, and also to publish them
periodically. These data were to have "special reference to
the condition of the working classes, particularly in agri-
cultural pursuits; and to the efficiency of the rules and regu-
lations for the furtherance of the welfare of the working
classes," The department was also to give corresponding
attention to the "extent and condition of production."
104 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The department is directly subordinate to the Board of
Trade, but has the greatest possible liberty in its own special
sphere of activity. It has been provided with an advisory
board to assist it in the preparation of statistics; this board
consists of professional men, representatives of employers
and employes and of the central departments concerned.
Whoever may be President of the Central Commission is a
permanent member of this consulting body.
"Sektionschef" Mataja is the head of the Labor Sta-
tistics Office. The office publishes annual reports on : labor
strikes and lock-outs; hours of labor in factories; labor
arbitration; labor and wage-agreements, etc. Since 1900
this department has also published the monthly "Soziale
Rundschau" (Social Review), which gives as complete as
possible a survey of all measures and conditions of impor-
tance in the realm of social service at home and abroad. For
the assistance of this branch of the service a "Sozialpoli-
tisches Archiv" was established in the Labor Statistics
Office in 1910. A large number of monographs were com-
piled by order of this office, deahng with special labor prob-
lems within the limits of certain industries and localities.
Most of these monographs were collected in the Commu-
nications of the Department of Labor Statistics, which
appeared from time to time. Li 1910 a special department
was established for industrial statistics (in connection with
the Labor Statistics Office), which soon published a Reg-
ister of Industrial Associations and their Unions. Since
August, 1912, the Board of Trade and Agriculture, also the
Central Statistical Commission, have published a weekly
Price List, which quotes the wholesale prices of the most im-
portant raw materials on the largest exchanges at home and
abroad; it also contains reports of the trade in the Vienna
stock-yards, and the prices of cattle and meat in Vienna.
The Price List is also the organ for the regular reports on
city prices of provisions.
Since 1862 the Board of Trade has compiled post and
telegraph statistics. The two numbers The Austrian Post
AUSTRIA 105
and Telegraph System, 1868 and 1869, were followed by
the regular publications in the Industrial and Commercial
News for the years 1870-1903. Since 1904 postal and tele-
graphic statistics have been published independently by the
Board of Trade in quarto volumes under the title Statistics
of the Austrian Post and Telegraph System.
The progressive development of the post and telegraph
system led to a further extension of these statistics by the
inclusion of the telephone system (1887) and the sum total
of the post oflSce savings banks (1903). Detailed statistics
of the latter have been published in their own annual state-
ments since 1882. The economic importance of the postal
savings banks is illustrated by their annual Statement of
Business and Accounts.
The Chambers of Commerce and Industry also perform
some of the tasks of a statistical department, that come
within the scope of their organization. They conduct a
register of the industries under their jurisdiction, which is
kept thoroughly up to date, by means of the statements of
the Treasury Board and "An-und Abmeldungen."
The reports, published upon instructions from the cham-
bers by the Board of Trade, are of great value in assisting to
recognize dislocations in the structure of industrial work-
shops (Produktionsstatten).
Another important branch of statistics undertaken by the
chambers is that of industrial production.
In 1873 the Board of Agriculture created a department of
Statistics of Agriculture, Forestry and Mines. This board
publishes the Manual of the Board of Agriculture, which
gives data on all subjects pertaining to the department.
Since that time the Forests of the Public and Landed Prop-
erty under the Jurisdiction of the I. R. Board of Agriculture
appeared (1885), and in 1907, as a continuation of this pub-
lication, the Manual of Public and Landed Property was
published. During the years 1906 to 1911 statistics of
peat-bogs were collected for Lower and Upper Austria,
Styria, Carinthia, Camivola, the Tyrol and Moravia.
106 MEMORIAL VOLUME
These were published in 1911 as an Information about
Peat-bogs for the above-mentioned countries, and they
went further than the periodical report that came into being
in 1901.
The Board of Agriculture has also compiled statistics of
the dams in mountain streams (Wildbachverbauimgen) for
the years 1883-1894, which were published separately.
In 1902 the Board of Agriculture published Dairy Com-
panies and other Enterprises for the Utilization of Dairy
Products; this furnished extensive statistics on the milk
trade, and in 1911 it was turned into the Yearly Report on
the Condition of the Milk Trade. The Board of Agricul-
ture publishes annual reports on the Spread of Phylloxera.
The Statistics of the Schools of Forestry and Agriculture are
published in the Gazette of Forestry and Agriculture.
The Home Department takes charge of the insurance
statistics. No oflScial statistics were compiled until the
eighties. At that time laws were enacted providing for
compulsory insurance against accident and sickness (for
workmen), and the government was obliged to procure the
bases necessary for this branch of government provision for
the working classes; it also became incumbent upon the
government to supervise the autonomous institutions for
workmen's insurance. The control of private insurance
companies also required that there should be a special de-
partment for this branch of government statistics. The
section possessing the most technical knowledge was placed
in charge of it, viz.: the technical insurance office of the
Home Department. This office publishes several state-
ments every year which are based on reports from the gov-
ernment departments and the insurance companies, and
these statements are brought before the senate. The mat-
ters chiefly considered in these statements are: The sum
total and general results of accident and health insurance,
and a report of the registered insurance companies. A
statement of the private insurance companies is also pub-
lished.
AUSTRIA 107
Reports on mine insurance companies were first compiled
in the Workmen's Insurance Department of the Home
Office.
Besides furnishing these reports to the Senate, the depart-
ment also compiles these statistics separately and publishes
them periodically; up to the present time three such works
have appeared, for the following periods: 1890-1896; 1897-
1901; 1902-1906.
Health statistics are published annually by the Health
Insurance Offices (Offices for Insurance against Sickness);
these are compiled according to the age and calling of those
insured. Such statistics were published for the year 1890
and for the five years 1891 to 1896.
In 1898 a publication was issued on The Conditions of
Private Employes for the year 1896, and constituted the
statistical basis on which the Pension Law of 1906 was
founded. The results of the insurances brought about by
this law have been reported by the Pension Office and the
Institutions for Compensation. A uniform official com-
pilation is being prepared.
The report on privalte insurance was published in detail
during the first decade of these statistics. This was pub-
lished with a synthetic text. Since 1908 complete statistics
are being compiled only every five years, and the last was
in 1912. During the intervals the statistics are published
in an abridged form without an accompanying text.
The Board of Health of the Home Department publishes
The Austrian Health Department, a weekly paper, which
furnishes valuable materials for health statistics.
Railway statistics were originally compiled and pub-
lished by the Central Statistical Commission; they appeared
in the work. The Railways of the Austro-Hungarian Mon-
archy and their Traffic in 1868 — which also appeared for the
following year. Upon the inauguration of a statistical
department in the Board of Trade, the railway statistics
were transferred to it (1870). Railway statistics were
now published under the title Statistical Record of the
108 MEMORUL VOLUME
Austro-Hungarian Railways. From 1879 on, the combined
statistics of the Austro-Hungarian railways were published
by the boards of both countries in the German and Hun-
garian languages, so that the Statistical Record now ap-
peared in both languages; it was published regularly till
1893.
In 1885 international railway statistics were published by
the Board of Trade under the title of European Railway
Statistics for the Year 1882. In 1896 the statistical office
of the recently organized Railway Department took over
this branch of the work, and published the Sum Total of
Austrian Railway Statisticsf or each of the years 1895, 1896
and 1897 separately. From 1898 to 1902 this office pubhshed
Statistics of the Locomotive Railways in Operation in the
Elingdoms and Provinces Represented in the Imperial Senate.
Besides this, special Statistics of the Electric Railways,
Cable-roads, and Horse-tramways in Austria were pub-
lished for each year from 1898 to 1902. Since 1903 these
two publications have been replaced by the Austrian Rail-
way Statistics, which appear annually in two parts. The
first comprises Statistics of Trunk and Local Railways,
and the second those of Short Lines and Truck-roads.
The Department of Railways has also published the fol-
lowing: Austrian Railways of Minor Importance (1908);
Financial Proceeds of Lines operated by the Government
on Account of their Owners in the years 1897 to 1906; The
Vienna City Railway from its Inauguration in 1898 to
1908 (published in 1909); The Austrian Government Rail-
ways from the Establishment of the Railway Department
in 1896 to 1908; lastly Austrian Government Railways dur-
ing the Years 1901-1910 (pubhshed in 1912).
The various departments of the Treasury Board have
evolved a number of new spheres of activity since this cen-
tral department was established. The Treasury Board
was much stimulated in the work of financial statistics by
the great reforms made in the administration of finance and
taxation. Very careful preparation was now required,
AUSTRIA 109
which could only be obtained by a thorough study of the
development of the various departments of finance. For
instance, one needed a knowledge of the direct and indirect
taxation of the fifties; of the reports on indirect taxes which
were levied before the "Quotendeputationen"; of the sub-
ject-matter of bills dealing with duties on spirits, beer and
sugar; of the general taxation laws, etc., — lastly a knowl-
edge was required of the tables of statistics which were used
in framing the reform of direct taxation in 1874. More
recent works to be studied were: The Report on the Re-
sults of the Regulation of the Ground-tax (1884); Results
of the Revision of the Land Register, by Virtue of the Law
of June 12, 1896; Subjects under Discussion and Reports
on them, for the Reform of Direct Personal Taxation; Tables
of Statistics on the Problem of the Fixed Standard for the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1892) (which were continued
in the Tables of Statistics on the Fixed Standard) ; the ma-
terials for a probate bill; the detailed reports for the draft
on the reform of taxes on buildings (1908), the Statistics of
Dwellings Taxable on the House-rent, according to condi-
tions in 1908 (published in 1909); Statistics of the Law
for Laborers' Dwellings (1902); and others. Income tax
statistics were published repeatedly.
The Treasury Board compiled very valuable materials
almost exclusively for administrative purposes, and these
were made public only in part in the Austria, a periodical
published by the Board of Trade. In order that these mate-
rials might be accessible to a larger circle the Gazette of the
I. R. Treasury Board was established in 1894, which appears
in annual sets. The Gazette contains detailed and almost
complete statistics of direct and indirect taxes and duties,
including stamp duties, and the branches of revenue related
thereto. This gives an insight into the total burden of the
population by computing the assessments and additional
payments of the provinces. Of late years the indebtedness
of the provincial treasuries is also included in the report.
The commercial and industrial conditions in our govern-
110 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ment enterprises, especially the government monopolies,
furnish interesting material for Statistics of Production
(Produktionsstatistik), By means of them, statistics of
health, accidents, and dwellings may be classified according
to the various categories of labor. Finance and credit in
this half of the empire and the technicalities of the budget
are dealt with in the Gazette, which also treats very thor-
oughly of the Austrian tobacco and salt monopolies. The
income tax has been considered in the columns of the
Gazette, partly in serial and partly in single articles. The
article by Baron Drotlefif von Friedenfels on The Amoimt
of Income according to Sex and Calling of those Assessed
deserves special mention.
A detailed report on the subject also appeared in two of
the Treasury Department's pubhcations, viz. : Materials for
Income Tax Statistics for 1898 and Compiled Assessments
for the Income Tax for 1903, Arranged According to the
Calling of those Assessed. In the last annual set appeared
Statistics of the Movement of Individuals liable to Income
Tax, and the Amount of their Income for the Years 1906-
1908. The results of government monopolies are issued
periodically in special publications.
Since 1894 we have The Tables of Statistics on the Aus-
trian Tobacco Monopoly; The Statistical Information about
the Austrian Tobacco Monopoly (published by the Board
of the Tobacco Trust) ; and since 1901 Departmental Infor-
mation about the Austrian Tobacco Trust. The output of
salt for 1898-1902 was dealt with in The Salt Works of Aus-
tria, and since 1903 in the Information about the Austrian
Salt Monopoly. Since 1905 reports on the social and indus-
trial conditions in the alpine salt works have been published
by the Treasury Board in Linz.
In connection with the inquiry into the Solvency of the
Provincial Finances in 1908, a wealth of material was placed
at the disposal of the experts by the Treasury in the publi-
cation Finances of the Kingdoms and Provinces represented
AUSTRIA 111
in the Imperial Senate, According to Assessment for the
Year 1905.
Originally the national debt was computed by comparing
the statements of the Board of Directors of the National
Debt with the reports of the Commission on the National
Debt, but since 1862 it has been done by the annual reports of
the Auditing Commission of the National Debt in the Senate.
In conclusion, we must remember the Public Works De-
partment. The compilation of all mining statistics (with
the exception of the Bruderladen, which are dealt with in
the Home Department) was transferred from the Depart-
ment of Agriculture to the Public Works Department in
1908. This department, while retaining the mode of
publicity previously in vogue, also arranges the materials
on a broader basis in a journal called Mining Statistics in
Austria, which appears as a supplement to the Manual of
the Department of Agriculture. The police reports on mines
are published in The Inspection of Mines in Austria. Lat-
terly the Public Works Department has also been publishing
a supplement in the Mining Manual.
The Board of Water Supply in the Home Department
has introduced a systematic count and listing of the national
supplies of water power, the results of which have been
published continuously since 1909 in the Austrian Water
Register.
The Journal of Industrial Education is also edited by the
Public Works Department; this journal publishes period-
ically the statistics of industrial schools compiled by the
Central Commission.
The data for military statistics are kept by the technical
committee of the War Office. In connection with the new
law regarding military service, an Annual of Military Sta-
tistics was published in the early seventies. This was done
at the instigation of Lieutenant Fieldmarshal Baron von
Kuhn, who was then minister for war. This work was
entrusted to a special section of the technical and adminis-
trative committee on military matters.
112 MEMORIAL VOLUME
This year-book or annual contained recruiting statistics,
statistics of rank, statistics of sanitation; the department
of military education and the administration of penal law
were also comprised in it; it had a land register, and statistics
on the diseases and mortality of horses and of the supply of
cavalry horses. The annual continued to appear until 1894.
Since that time the matters dealt with in it have been pub-
lished only in part, although compiled mostly in the same
manner. Extracts of the various parts are published in the
Austrian Manual of Statistics.
The decentrahzation of government statistics, as shown
by the facts we have given, has been brought about by the
division of labor. It has been advanced by the progressive
speciaUzation in statistical methods and by the efficiency
of the central departments. However, this decentralization
often causes inconveniences, which the statistical department
must try to prevent. Of course, there must be a lack of
uniformity in the treatment of statistical data owing to the
fact that the work is distributed among various offices.
The continuous extension of departmental statistics in each
office of the central government makes it almost impossible
to obtain a survey of the whole domain of government
statistics.
This often leads to two concurrent counts being made,
thus increasing the cost besides causing uncertainty and
dissatisfaction in the organization of government statistics.
The consciousness of imiform management with a definite
aim is most essential for the success of any collection of
statistics. The settlement of this difficulty is only possible
if the Central Commission has an exact insight into all the
collections made and all the statistical needs in the various
branches of the department, and this leads to the conclusion
that not a single branch, of statistics should be concealed
from the Central Commission in any phase of its official
treatment.
However, the Central Commission has contrived to main-
tain an honored position in the center of administrative
AUSTRIA 113
statistical work in spite of the extensive division of labor.
The Central Commission has secured a most extensive
survey of the whole province of statistics, partly by collecting
the whole material for government statistics and partly
by maintaining a close connection with all branches of
national and autonomous government. Even though it
may temporarily get out of touch with the various sections
of the statistical service, the thread can soon be taken up
again, so that, in spite of all difficulties, the Central Com-
mission stands out as the head of the whole organization.
V. ' Statistics of Self-Governing Bodies
The Austrian constitution provides that both the com-
munal and provincial statistics of the self-governing states
should be much more independent and comprehensive than
those of the other states, in which communal and provincial
statistics merely represent integral parts of the national
statistics.
Upon the amendment of the constitution, the self-govern-
ing states were destined to have judicial problems of their
own to solve, and the statistical departments in those states
were given equal power to that of the national statistical
service. These departments in the self-governing states
had to assist the legislative and administrative functions of
the cities and provinces in their respective states. In this
way they naturally became an auxiliary to the national
statistical service. Being more closely related — ^both objec-
tively and geographically — ^to the various phenomena of
social and agricultural life, this service is able to enter more
into detail and to suggest the solution of problems for lim-
ited districts which cannot be dealt with by the national
service, owing to the fact that its jurisdiction covers the
whole empire. By intelligent treatment of special local
problems the autonomous statistical service may explain and
popularize statistics and arouse the people to an apprecia-
tion of the imperial statistics.
Almost all the provinces are developing great efficiency
114 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in statistics; still the comparison of statistical data has only
been accomplished by degrees in the provincial offices, and
by but few of the crown lands at all. The collections and
publications of the provincial offices are at the disposal of
the administration. Special problems are dealt with scien-
tifically. At the same time special attention is given to
the detailed compilation of the great national censuses,
especially of the census of population and live stock, and
the survey of industrial and agricultural pursuits and so on.
The provincial statistical office of Galicia is the oldest
(1872) and also shows the greatest literary efficiency. This
province publishes a Gazette, which now comprises 24
annual sets; in this publication all departments are dealt
with, partly in provincial numbers and partly in exhaustive
single ones. All the data of Galicia's autonomous govern-
ment have been published, since 1887, in a statistical manual.
In the years 1883-1898 a special section for industrial and
trade statistics was created, which published a very instruct-
ive work on the Condition of Industry and Mining in
Galicia in 1910.
The provincial department in Bukowina was established
in 1870, and published its work in a Gazette, which now
comprises 16 books. This office also recently published an
Annual of Statistics for the self-governing Duchy of Buko-
wina for the year 1907-8, which was repeated for the year
1908-9.
The Styrian provincial office was established in 1893 and
has published up to date a Gazette comprising 25 volumes.
In the years 1899 and 1912 the statistical data were also
compiled in a Manual.
In Bohemia, a provincial office of statistics for special
districts existed as far back as 1861. The regular provincial
office, inaugurated in 1898, publishes the results of its work
in a Gazette, which has increased to 21 volumes. The total
statistics of the crown land were compiled in 1909 and 1913
in a Manual of Statistics.
AUSTRIA 115
A provincial oflBce was created in Moravia in 1899, but
has published little up to the present.
The Silesian provincial office was also established in 1899;
it publishes a Manual of Statistics of its own, which already
consists of nine annual parts. In addition the office has
published several extensive monographs.
The provincial office of statistics of Lower Austria, estab-
lished in 1907, compiles the provincial finances in an inde-
pendent publication.
The creation of a provincial office of statistics in the Tyrol
has been under consideration of late. In the remaining
provinces statistical work is still carried on as part of the
national statistics.
As soon as the cities grew prosperous and acquired politi-
cal independence (or an independent government), they
began to turn their attention to administrative statistics, in
which they have developed remarkable efficiency. Owing
to the peculiar nature of the problems arising from condi-
tions in the large centers of population, communal statistics
occupy a place of their own in government statistics.
The organization of the statistical service in the cities is
very varied. As a rule communal statistics are managed in
close connection with the city government, which usually
has an independent service for its various departments.
Only in a few cases is the statistical work concentrated in
one office. We shall now briefly discuss only those forms
which show a large degree of independence in statistics
within the scope of the city government.
The oldest established independent office of statistics is
that of Vienna, founded in 1861. The Bureau was turned
into a department of the municipal council in 1883. It then
began to publish the Statistical Annual of the City of Vieima,
which is still in existence. Besides this the department also
publishes weekly and monthly reports on almost all depart-
ments of the administration.
The city of Prague estabhshed a Bureau of its own in
1870; this Bureau works along the same hnes as that of
116 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Vienna, and publishes a Manual, the first number of which
appeared in 1871.
The organization of an office of statistics in Lemberg
ensued in 1872. The lack of efficiency in this office led to
its reorganization ia 1890. Since then the office has pub-
lished an annual as well as the Statistical Gazette for the
City of Lemberg; a monthly statistical journal since 1906.
Great results have been achieved by the statistical service
of Cracow. Here we have numerous reports on specific city
problems which date back as far as 1868, but it was not until
1884 that an office of statistics was established in this city.
This office now publishes annual reports on the movements
of population and sanitary conditions, besides monthly
reports on various other administrative matters.
The establishment of a Bureau of Statistics in Trieste
dates from 1873. Since 1874 this office has been publishing
monthly reports on various subjects, and since 1902 weekly
demographical and meteorological reports besides.
In 1880 a municipal statistical office was organized in
Reichenberg; to this office we owe several important works
on communal statistics.
In Aussig the statistical memoranda have been compiled
since 1885 by the Board of Health, which handles the annual
reports on the demographical and hygienic conditions in the
city.
Briinn does not possess a bureau of its own, but its city
council publishes a report on communal enterprises and
statistics.
The statistical service in OlmUtz and Tetschen is organized
in a similar manner to that of Briinn. Since about 1888
these three cities have published reports on health and ad-
ministration, mostly comprising five years each.
Trient has had an office of statistics for some time now.
One more extremely valuable organization remains to be
mentioned, by which cooperation between the national and
autonomous governments in statistical matters is secured.
In November, 1886, Inama invited a number of Austrian
AUSTRIA 117
cities to send in statistics on uniform formulae. The invi-
tation was sent to all corporate towns and to all others of
more than 15,000 inhabitants, but the voluntary participa-
tion of smaller places was also considered. These reports
were all combined in an Austrian municipal manual, which
was laid before the diet of the fourth United Demographical
and Hygienic Congress in Vienna. A conference of Austrian
municip£ll statisticians was held in connection with the diet;
this conference resolved to form the Austrian municipal
manual into a regular oflScial statistical publication.
The work is organized on the principle of voluntary con-
tributions which are furnished on uniform schedules, these
being drawn up by the Central Commission in agreement
with representatives of the cities. The Conference of Mu-
nicipal Statisticians, which meets in Vienna every two years,
determines the principles on which the work shall be done.
Under the influence of the impetus given municipal sta-
tistics by holding inter-communal conferences and the pub-
lication of the municipal manual, the Diets of Silesia and
Moravia almost simultaneously passed a resolution to come
to an understanding with the Central Statistical Commis-
sion and the provincial committees of the other crown lands
in regard to the mutual extension of provincial statistics.
After exhaustive preliminary discussions the publication
of a Statistical Annual of the Autonomous Provinces was
decided on, which was to include all the Austrian crown
lands. The materials contributed by each province were
gradually to extend to all departments of their administra-
tion. A periodical compilation of separate subjects was to
be made at longer intervals, mostly five years.
The whole plan for the work is laid down in as detailed a
manner as possible at general conferences. These confer-
ences met only in Vienna at first, but since 1903 the meeting-
place has been changed each time, in order to give the
representatives of the various provinces an opportunity to
inspect personally the special institutions in each district.
The President of the Central Statistical Commission pre-
118 MEMORIAL VOLUME
sided at these conferences, and the necessary preparations
for them were made by the Central Commission, which
also has charge of the uniform publication of the materials.
Thus it will be seen that the Central Commission not only
had a direct influence on the organization of statistics in the
autonomous states, but also assisted in their development.
The advice and opinions of the Commission were helpful to
provinces and cities in organizing their oflSces of statistics;
the Presidents of the Commission assisted largely by per-
sonal intervention; it was also an inducement to many
autonomous offices to raise their standard of efficiency to
the minimum required in order to participate in the general
conferences.
The Treasury Board, as has already been mentioned,
takes a lively interest in provincial and municipal finances;
it has already published works on this subject and is con-
tinuing to do so.
With all due appreciation of these organizations, there are
certain faults which cannot be overlooked in a just criticism.
The present organization of the Provincial and Municipal
Manual is based on the principle of individual liberty with
regard to the contributions, while the program is discussed
jointly but not accepted as binding on any one. The success
of such a system depends very largely on the suggestive
influence of the leading personalities in the organization, so
that no system can be created on a permanent basis in this
manner. The lack of "executive authority" is felt here as
well as in many branches of national statistics; the leading
statistical office of a state should have this at its disposal in
order to ensure successful results.
VI. Conclusion
There is no fixed rule for ffiling the leading positions in
the national and autonomous offices of statistics; indeed
the conditions are too various to permit of a uniform custom.
Of late years the President of the Central Commission has
been chosen from the ranks of men who have been aca-
AUSTRIA 119
demic teachers of subjects pertaining to statistics and have,
at the same time, had practical experience in the field of
government statistics. The heads of the offices of statistics
in the central department usually have merely practical
office training.
The autonomous offices of statistics are conducted partly
by former officials of the Central Commission, partly by
university professors, and partly by men who have received
their training in the office itself or in similar positions.
The experience of the Central Statistical Commission
with regard to its staff has proved that the one-sided training
of professional statisticians is not altogether to be recom-
mended for positions of responsibihty. For such positions
a thorough grasp of administrative matters in general is
essential, for statistical research alone does not suffice to
unravel the tangled threads of conditions arising from
peculiar causes.
On the other hand, it is only by an exact knowledge of
the separate departments of the administration that sta-
tistics can be fitted to given needs and thus be of greater
practical value without detriment to scientific research.
In the statistical service of the central departments pro-
fessional knowledge of these departments is absolutely
necessary for positions of responsibility; this is especially
the case in the "special departments" (Fachdepartements)
of the Treasury Board, in the technical insurance office in
the Home Department, etc.
The mere numerical compilation of the materials is
mostly in the hands of clerks of an audit office who have
passed a government examination. A special technical
examination is required only for the department of foreign
and interstate trade statistics.
The administration of statistics is assisted in manifold
ways by various offices and organizations.
The "competent" (kompetent) boards naturally coop-
erate in the work, but, besides these, the following also
assist: The advisory Board of the Office of Labor Statis-
120 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tics; the Permanent Commission for Estimating Trade
Values in the Board of Trade. In compiling harvest sta-
tistics the chief agricultural corporations have the assistance
of the agricultural unions, the district associations and
clubs. They also employ permanently confidential men
belonging to agricultural circles, such as teachers in agri-
cultural colleges, landed proprietors, farmers and other
appropriate persons.
Statistical work in Austria has been directly assisted by
the pastors of the religious denominations recognized by
law, who keep "enrolment books" (Matrikenbiicher) for
this purpose.
The Central Commission maintains the friendliest rela-
tions with the statistical service of foreign countries, and
the directors of government statistics in Austria have always
regarded it as a privilege to assist in cultivating these rela-
tions. Austria was one of the first states that made the
largest appropriation for the decrees of the International
Statistical Congress, which held its third session in Vienna
in 1857. The diet of the International Statistical Institute
has since taken the place of the Congress, and Austria
has become more closely connected than ever with foreign
countries in matters of statistics. The decrees of this
scientific association are regarded as a standard, not only
for the extension of the work in new departments, but also
for the reconstruction and reformation of the methods and
technique of the whole statistical service.
At the fourteenth session of the Institute, held recently
in Vienna, a resolution was passed providing for the estab-
lishment of an international Bureau of Statistics. This
Bureau already has definite prospects of specific subsidies
from the governments of various states. Thus the interna-
tional interchange of ideas on cultural work of mutual
interest has been greatly advanced.
The appreciation that is felt for Austria's efficiency in the
domain of international statistics has been proved by the
fact that Inama was appointed president of the Institute
AUSTRIA 121
from 1899-1908, while Dr. Meyer, the present President
of the Central Commission, is now vice-president of the
Institute.
The Central Commission and the statistical oflSces of the
central departments maintain a permanent correspondence
with a number of independent international institutes.
Among these are the Industrial Institute of Agriculture in
Rome; the International Bureau for Legal Protection of
Labor at Basle; the International Union for Dealing with
the Problem of the Unemployed in Ghent, etc.
The cooperation of the Central Commission and the
statistical offices of the central departments is by no means
restricted to the members' and officers' interest and partici-
pation in the deliberations of the Institute; indeed these
departments have always striven to call the attention of
foreign experts to their work, especially at the congresses
and the larger international expositions.
There is no prospect of any fundamental change in Aus-
trian statistics. Although the present highly developed
system of decentralization has the disadvantages that have
been described, it also has the advantage of facilitating
the adaptation of statistical work to the vicissitudes of
agricultural and social life, which sometimes occur rather
suddenly. The legal bases of statistics are not sufficiently
developed yet; only in certain departments are there any
definite rules to regulate the obligation to assist in taking
the census, whether it be by furnishing reports or collecting
data; for various reasons there are special difficulties in the
way of perfecting legislation along these lines in Austria.
Both these reasons, the excessive division of labor and the
unequal distribution of legislative bases, place great diffi-
culties in the way of an equable development of statistics.
With regard to the first, the Central Commission has a
very important task to perform, and must cooperate in the
organization that has become necessary owing to the dis-
tribution of the work.
The fact that the Commission is composed of representa-
122 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tives of all departments enables it to keep the whole thing
in view in spite of the multiplicity of various branches. It
behooves the Commission especially to follow the improve-
ments in methods and technique in all countries and thus
to keep the lead in statistics. It may be that the organi-
zation is somewhat lax in comparison with the importance
and difficulty of the undertaking. A large amoimt of
mutual good-will and cooperation are needed in order to
attain the end in view, but these have not been lacking
hitherto, and the last few years especially have brought
most satisfactory results.
BELGIUM
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN BELGIUM
By Dr. Armand Julin
Director-General of the Belgian Labor Bureau, Member of the International
Statistical Institute
Chapter I. Historical Survey
A vigorous interest in statistical researches has been both
created and facilitated in Belgium by her restricted terri-
tory, very dense population, prosperous agriculture, and the
variety and vitality of her manufacturing interests. Nor
need it surprise us that the successive governments of Bel-
gium have given statistics a prominent place in their affairs.
Baron de Reiffenberg, who published a bibliography of the
ancient statistics of Belgium,* has given a long list of docu-
ments relating to the population, agriculture, industry,
commerce, transportation facilities, finance, army, etc. It
was, however, chiefly the Austrian government which in-
creased the number of such investigations and reports.
The royal archives are filled to overflowing with documents
from that period of our history and their very over-abun-
dance forms even for the historian a most diflScult task.f
With the French domination (1794-1814), the interest for
statistics did not diminish. Lucien Bonaparte, Minister of
the Interior from 1799-1800, organized in France the first
Bureau of Statistics, while his successor, Chaptal, undertook
to compile the statistics of the departments. As far as
Belgium is concerned, there were published in Paris seven
statistical memoirs prepared under the direction of the
prefects. An eighth issue was not finished and a ninth one
* Nouveaux mimoires de I'Acadimie royale des sciences et belles lettres de Bruxelles,
t. VII.
t The Archives of the kingdom and the catalogue of the van Hulthem library,
preserved in the Biblioth^que Royale at Brussells, offer valuable information on
this head.
126 MEMORIAL VOLUME
was never printed. Each of these memoirs dealt with a
single province of Belgium. Their plan, however, was not
uniform; but they generally treated of the principal objects,
such as territory, population, agriculture, industry and com-
merce. These documents contain a mass of information
which is even today full of interest and valuable for purposes
of comparison with more recent data. Because of the
increased cost of their publication, the French government
discontinued in 1805 to print these statistical memoirs of the
prefects. Nevertheless, these officials continued to compile
certain data and to pubUsh them in the form of almanacs.*
After the fall of the French empire, the provinces of
Belgium were in 1814 united with Holland. A royal decree
of July 3, 1826, appointed a statistical commission attached
to the central office in the Hague. The management of
this office was entrusted to Ed. Smits, who, at the same
time, served as General Secretary of the Statistical Com-
mission.
It is about this time that the name of Queteletf first
appears in the history of Belgian statistics. To be more
precise, it was in the month of April, 1825, that Quetelet
presented to the Academy his first statistical work entitled :
"Memoir sur les lois des naissances et de la mortality k
Bruxelles." During his stay in Paris in 1823, Quetelet made
the acquaintance of Foiuier, Poisson, Lacroix and other
French savants. It was from this time that he began to
interest himself in statistics from a scientific viewpoint.
It was not very long after his initiation that the first results
of his renowned activity became known.
In 1827 Smits pubUshed in Bruxelles, under the auspices
of the statistical commission of the Netherlands, the first
official collection of documents entitled "Statistique na-
tionale. Developpement de trente et un tableaux publics
* Heuschling. Apergu des principales publications statistiques faites sur la Belgique.
depuis Vincorperation de ce pays d la France, en 179i, jusgu'i ce jour. {Bulletin de
la Commission Centrale de statistique, tome I, pp. 679 et suiv.)
t Joseph Lottin. Quetelet, StatisHden et sodologue, Louvain, Institut suplrieur
de philosophie, 191S.
BELGIUM 127
par la Commission de statistique." This work, although of
little scientific value, contained researches into the number
of births, deaths and marriages in the Netherlands during
the period 1815-1824. The second collection of tables pub-
lished by the general commission of statistics appeared in
the Hague in the year 1829 and dealt with the movement of
foreign commerce during 1825-1828, sanitation, agriculture,
meteorology, fisheries and coal mining.
Quetelet, with his definite bent towards statistics, engaged
several experts to undertake the calculation of mortality
tables for some of the more important cities of Belgium.
He himself continued his researches into the births and
deaths in Bruxelles and worked up from the original official
documents the number of foundlings, inmates of work-
houses and prisons in the kingdom. It is with the aid of
these documents that he wrote his memoir: "Recherches
sur la population, les naissances, les deces, les prisons, les
dep6ts de mendicite, etc., dans le royaume des Pays-Bas,"
laid before the Academy February 27, 1827. This work,
Quetelet stated, had been undertaken for the purpose of
inducing the government to take a new census of the popu-
lation. And indeed, on September 29, 1828, a royal decree
ordered a census to be taken on January 1, 1830, the very
year in which the revolution broke out which gave Belgium
her independence. The Dutch troops were withdrawn after
four days' fighting, continuing from September 23 to 26,
1830. September 26 the provisional government was or-
ganized and proclaimed the independence of Belgium to take
efifect on October 4, and announced the approaching convo-
cation of a Congress.
The taking of the census itself was in no way impeded by
these events, but the tabulation of the data was necessarily
retarded. The new government, however, showed great
interest in statistics in spite of its preoccupation with
more urgent government affairs. On February 24, 1831, a
few days after the Congress had enacted the constitution,
the provisional government organized a general statistical
128 MEMORIAL VOLUME
bureau in the department of the interior. Smits was made
its first director. A decree of the regent of Belgium com-
missioned Smits and Quetelet to publish the results of the
Census of 1830.*
The publication appeared in the beginning of the year
1832 under the title: "Recherches sur la reproduction et
sur la mortalite de I'homme aux differents S,ges et sur la
population de la Belgique d'apres le recensement de 1829
(premier recueil officiel des documents statistiques)." This
work contains the first table of the population of Belgium
classified according to sex and civil condition, as well as a
table of the mortality in urban and rural districts. Further-
more, it contains observations on the influence of age,
occupation, economic status, sex and season upon mortality.
Although this work was published under the name of Quete-
let and Smits, the former was responsible for the greater
part of it.
A little over a year later, Smits and Quetdlet published
a second work, "Statistique des tribuneaux de la Belgique
pendant les anndes 1826-1830 (2e recueil oflSciel)." Quete-
let, who already since 1828 had made known his views on
social determinism, was intensely interested in moral sta-
tistics. We need not be surprised, therefore, that under his
influence the question of criminality was, from the very
beginning, given prominent place by the Bureau of Statis-
tics. The larger part of this work was due to Quetelet.
The means placed at the disposal of the bureau were not
large and even the very existence of the bureau uncertain.
More than once the necessary amount proposed in the
budget was questioned. We also owe a great debt to Smits,
in spite of the imperfections of his works, for having safe-
guarded the existence of the bureau and succeeded in pub-
lishing in succession four volumes on the general statistics
of the kingdom. They appeared in 1836, 1838, 1840 and
1841, respectively, the material treated therein being classi-
* Quetelet. Notice sur M. Edouard Smits. (Bulletin de la Commission centrale
de statistique, tome V.)
BELGIUM 129
fied under four principal divisions : the physical, industrial,
political and moral state of Belgium.
Quetelet, in his necrological notes dedicated to Smits,
after having called attention to the sectional division of
the above-mentioned works, adds the following interesting
remark: "It is to be regretted that, since then, it has
practically been decided to adhere no longer to this form
and to decentralize statistics and to assign its branches to
the different Ministries; it is evident that it is in the interest
of the administration and of science to centralize, at least
as regards the publications, and to re-adopt the former
methods, if only from the viewpoint of uniformity and
economy." *
Smits tendered his resignation in 1841. This is an impor-
tant year in the history of Belgian statistics, for it marks
the entrance of Quetelet on the scene of official statistics
upon which his strong personality left an indelible impres-
sion.
On the 16th of March, 1841, there was organized in the
Ministry of the Interior a statistical central commission.
A report t to the king sets forth in the following terms
the way in which this institution came into being :
In creating in the Ministry of the Interior a central bureau of statistics, the provi-
sional government intended to enable the administration to gather and classify in
systematic order the available data which are to be made the subject of research
by this important branch of governmental science.
But soon this object was lost sight of. Some departments neglected their statis-
tics entirely, while others worked thereon so independently, that they often drew
their information from the same source, in this way duplicating and crossing each
other in their researches. This lack of coordination was bound to lead to disorgani-
zation, double work and incompleteness.
What oiu" statistics most need in order that our government and science may
derive the best results to which they are justly entitled after all these efforts is a
central management, a clear object and well defined bases of investigation.
There shall be created a statistical central commission for the purpose of bringing
together in a central office all the information which has heretofore been collected
by the different administrations.
Each department shall continue to publish its own statistics but on a uniform
* Quetelet, he dt., p. 543.
t The documents analysed hereafter are printed in extenso in the front of the first
volume of the Bulletin de la Commission Centrale de Statistique.
10
130 MEMORIAL VOLUME
plan, previously decided upon, in this way securing a working coordination and a
uniformity of the publications.
On account of its importance we quote the exact text of
the royal decree of March 16, 1841:
Pursuant of a decree of the provisional government of Belgium, dated January
24, 1831, commissioning the ministry of the interior with the creation of a general
statistical department of the kingdom;
In order to regulate and extend the statistical publications of the different minis-
terial departments;
On the strength of the reports of our Minister of the Interior and the advice of
the chiefs of the other departments;
We have decreed and are decreeing:
Article 1. — Be it known that there is created in the ministry of the interior a
statistical central commission whose members shall be appointed by us and chosen
as far as possible from among the o£Scials of the different government departments.
Article 2. — One third of the commission shall be renewed every two years
beginning with the first day of January, 1843. The retirements shall take place
in order of seniority in service and, in case of equality, by lot. Retiring members
shall be provided for.
Article 3. — The commission shall submit a complete plan for the statistical
publications of the different branches of the administration.
Article 4. — It shall have to pass upon matters submitted to it by our Minister
of the Interior. It shall communicate directly with the Minister.
Article 5. — ^The manner in which it is to exercise its functions and the order
of its working procedure shall be set forth in a special manual, subject to our
approval, drawn up by the Minister of the Interior with the assistance of the chiefs
of other departments.
Article 6. — A certain sum shall be appropriated for attendance, allowances and
office expenses.
Article 7. — Our Minister of the Interior is responsible for the execution of this
decree.
Bbuxelles, March 16, 1841. Leopold.
Quetelet, who was appointed president of the Statistical
Central Commission, held this position until his death on
February 17, 1874, and Xavier HeuschUng, chief of the
statistical bureau of the Ministry of the Interior, was made
secretary of the commission, in which capacity he served
until December 30, 1870.
Immediately after the institution of the Statistical Central
Commission, the government endeavored to ascertain and
report regularly upon the strength and wealth of the country,
the physical condition and the moral and intellectual state
BELGIUM 131
of the nation. With this object in view, official publications
were undertaken or continued on the subject of the move-
ment of the population, foreign commerce, mining, metallur-
gical factories and steam engines. There need as yet to be
mentioned the rather important administrative pubUcations
of the railroads, the highways and canals, city toll, tariff on
bread and meat, conditions of the laboring classes and child
labor, work performed in prisons and workhouses, gifts for
religious and charitable establishments and public instruc-
tion in all grades.*
But it was the preparation for and taking of a complete
census to which the efforts of the Statistical Central Commis-
sion were chiefly directed. This census, which was taken
on the 15th of October, 1846, dealt with the population,
with agriculture and with industry. At the time of its
issuance it was considered a work of the highest order from
the viewpoint of statistical analysis and arrangement of the
material and even today gives valuable information on
many points.
The data relating to that part of the census deaUng with
the population are subdivided into the following subjects : —
the number of inhabited and empty houses; the number of
stories and occupied rooms, classified according to urban
and rural districts; pleasure grounds adjoining dweUings;
houses insured against fire, and the amount of insurance,
furniture and merchandise included; population by house
and family; population classified by sex; indigent families
or households one or more of whose members are dependent
upon public charity; children classified by sex, who are
receiving instruction in primary, middle or superior public
schools or at home; finally, the population according to
residence at the time of the enumeration and classified as to
civil status, origin, language, religion, age, occupation or
condition, t
*See, Expoai de la Situation du Royaume, 18il-B0, Introduction. In the
Bibliography prepared by Heuschling, and cited above, will be found the exact
titles of the publications here mentioned in a general way.
t Expose de la Situation du Royaume, 18^-60, titre II, p. i.
132 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The agricultural census is even today considered by
scientists a work of the first order. It comprised an enumer-
ation in each community of the agricultural population from
the age of 12 and upwards, separating the members of the
family permanently occupied in agricultural pursuits, the
farm hands and day laborers, with the number of days spent
in work during the year, the number of domestic animals,
the area under cultivation, the subdivisions of this area, the
nature and extent of the products, the production and
quantity per hectare and the total quantity, also informa-
tion on the rotation of crops, the mean weight of grain and
seed per hectolitre, the wages of the day laborers, the average
price of the ground and the leases per hectare and the seeds
used per hectare.
The industrial census contained information for each
industry of the country as to the number of factories, manu-
facturers or artisans, the number of workers by sex and age
(including the foremen and members of the family employed
as workmen); a classification of the workers according to
daily wages; the number and amount of horse power of the
engines; the number of furnaces, forges and ovens; the
number of looms, machines and principal utensils employed
in the industry.
It had not been considered advisable to extend the census
any further for fear that the accuracy of the declaration
might suffer and that, in asking for too many details, the
whole success of the enterprise might be jeopardized.
The statistical tables are arranged according to a general
technological grouping and according to the alphabetical
order of the industries. The data of those localities entitled
to the name of towns are published separately, while those
of other communities are treated together. Furthermore,
the results are classified by provinces, and a second part
of the census entitled "Recapitulation generale" groups all
the former data and summarizes them. The industrial
classification comprises 275 rubrics or divisions.
BELGIUM 133
The Census of 1846 does not concern itself with industries
carried on in the home.
According to the authors of the census, "this restriction
was necessary in order to prevent double entries which
would otherwise have occurred frequently as many house-
workers work for more than one concern."
Nor was the population following commercial pursuits
considered in this census. The transportation industry was
also omitted in the enumeration.
From the view point of accuracy of the declarations made,
the most stringent precautions were taken to insure the
return of the bulletins, which were subjected to a most
rigid examination on the part of the central administration,
and whenever the slightest doubt existed, supplementary
information was asked for.
As regards the number of workers occupied in various
industries (314,842), it must be considered firstly, that the
census was taken in October of 1846, that is to say, right
after a very severe economic crisis, and that it is therefore
safe to say that the declarations made by the employers have
in many cases been incorrect; and secondly, that the em-
ployers rarely return the exact number of workmen employed
in order to escape part of the hcense fee. The figures given
in the statistics have, therefore, more than once been taken
from the number of licenses issued annually. The number
of 314,842 workmen must thus be regarded as very low.
The official statistics were thus based upon this threefold
Census of 1846.
With these vast operations the organization period of
Belgian statistics is brought to a close.
134 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Chapter II. Organization and Reports op Statistical
Services
I. Legislation
In Belgium there is no general legislation on the organi-
zation and functional purposes of statistics.
The enumerations of the population were soon taken at
regular intervals. After the first census of this kind had
been taken in conformity with an Order in Council of June
30, 1846, a law of June 2, 1856, prescribed that a general
census of the population should be taken every ten years in
all of the communes of the kingdom, the first of which was
to take place December 31, of the same year. Later, in
order to bring the Belgian census date into agreement with
that generally selected in other countries, the law of May 25,
1880, modified the period of the general enumeration. The
first clause states that the enumeration of the population
should take place henceforth on dates corresponding to a
decimal date. The next census was fixed for December
31, 1880. It was to include a census of agriculture and
industry.
The keeping of registers of population is closely bound
up with the carrying out of general enumerations. The
Order in Council of June 30, 1846, had already made this
obligatory in each of the communes of the kingdom; the
law of June 2, 1856, renewed this requirement and ordained
that the registers of population should be corrected and
completed after each census.
A census of industry was taken in 1846, in 1866 (not pub-
lished), in 1880, in 1896 and in 1910. The first three were
taken by virtue of the law and Orders in Council prescrib-
ing the census of the population. That of 1896 was taken
under the law of June 29, 1896; articles 3 and 4 of this law
provided penalties for persons who refused to fulfil the re-
quirements of the census and declared that the facts might
be gathered oflacially at the expense of the delinquents.
BELGIUM 135
The law of December 14, 1910, made provision for the
taking of a census of industry at regular intervals: "There
shall be taken every ten years," states the first clause of
that law, "conjointly with the general census of the popula-
tion, a census of industry and of commerce."
Compared with previous laws relating to the censuses of
industry, the law of December 14, 1910, presents various
distinctive features: First, the regular periodicity of the
census is established, whereas previously the census had been
taken at irregular intervals of from twenty to fourteen and
sixteen years between former censuses; second, the census
is combined with the enumeration of the population and is
taken conjointly with it. This was the case in 1846, in
1866 and in 1880, but the Census of 1896 was based upon
the population registers drawn up as a result of the
general census of December 31, 1890. A summary of the
methods of the Census of 1896 gives all the details resulting
from the choice of this statistical basis; third, the census is
extended to include industry and commerce. Those of
1846, 1880 and 1896 include only industry; that of 1866 was
extended to commercial estabHshments but it was not pub-
lished. As in 1896, penalties are provided for those who
refuse to comply with the official requirements.
There were censuses of agriculture in 1846, in 1856, in
1866 and 1880, carried out simultaneously with the censuses
of the population. The law of September 11, 1895, provided
for a general census of agriculture to be taken that year.
Clause two of the same law states: that beginning with the
year 1896 a partial census of agriculture should be taken
annually, relating particularly to crops and the number of
the principal animals utilized in agriculture.
These partial enumerations were carried out for some
years. They were finally discontinued, their utility not
being proportionate to their expense. A general census was
taken on December 31, 1910.
The legislative measures which have just been enumer-
ated had in view certain special statistical operations, such
136 MEMORIAL VOLUME
as the enumerations of the population, of industry and of
agriculture, or keeping the registers of the population.
They do not exactly constitute a government statute whose
character is determined by a definite statistical purpose.
We must turn to the Bureau of Labor in order to see an
instance of general statistics regulated by a public act of
authority. The Bureau of Labor was created by an Order
in Council of November 12, 1894, and was organized by
virtue of a second Order in Council bearing the date of April
12, 1895. According to the terms of article 2 of this Order,
"the Bureau of Labor has for its function to make inquiry,
wherever necessary, and at the instance of competent author-
ities, as to the outlook of industrial and agricultural labor,
and also as to the condition of the wage earners in industry,
trades, commerce, agriculture and transportation; to in-
vestigate the effects of the laws and regulations regarding
them, and in general to collect all such information as may
contribute to their material, intellectual and moral well-
being."
There may also be cited among the measures taken in
Belgium by the central authority, the Orders in Council
by virtue of which the Statistical Central Commission has
been charged with pubhshing an account of the condition
of the kingdom. The purpose of these publications is to
state authoritatively and set forth in regular order the phys-
ical, moral and intellectual condition of the nation, the
power, the strength, and the wealth of the country. Sta-
tistical accounts have appeared relating to the periods
1841-1850, 1851-1860, 1861-1875, 1876 to 1900. The
compilation of the last summary statement which has just
been published was the outcome of an Order in Council of
May 29, 1902. A new summary statement for the period
1901-1910 is in preparation (Order in Council, November
20, 1913).
Aside from the cases which have just been noted, the
statistical publications by the different ministerial depart-
ments do not find their basis in an act of legislative power
BELGIUM 137
or of executive power, in the form of an Order in Council;
they originate by virtue of an administrative decision and
are based on a tradition more or less ancient. A complete
hst of them is given at the end of this article.
II. Subject Matter of the Principal Statistical Publications
in Belgium
A. Deniographic Statistics. — ^The principal demographical
investigation is the census of the population, the basic leg-
islation for which we have pointed out above.
The census* aims to ascertain the number of inhabitants
either according to the population of customary residence
or according to the population de facto; also according to
sex, age, place of birth, nationality, language, degree of
education, civil condition, occupations or positions of the
inhabitants, number of households and the number of
houses. The census is preceded by a verification of the
numbering of all the houses and places which serve as habi-
tations, and of a list of these houses and places.
Agents are appointed by the communal administrations
under the control of the provincial governor in the propor-
tion of at least one to every one thousand inhabitants, to
distribute and gather up from the houses the blank forms
provided for the declarations of the inhabitants. The dis-
tribution of the blank forms is made from the 20th to the
25th of December. These forms are of three kinds: the
household form, the special personal form and the special
collective form.
On the household form, the only form used previous to
1876, is written the names of every person composing the
household, having their customary residence in the enumer-
ated house, whether they are present or not at the time of
the taking of the census.
The special personal form is used for the names of persons
who do not have their customary residence in the house but
* From the Report an the Condition of the Kingdom, 1876-1910. Vol. II, p. 68.
138 MEMORIAL VOLUME
find themselves there accidentally at the time of the taking
of the census.
The special collective form, established in 1890, includes
the list of persons segregated in boarding schools, barracks,
charitable institutions, etc. The facts concerning each of
the persons inscribed in the collective form are finally copied
on individual sUps which are addressed, like the special
personal forms, to the commune in which the various persons
have declared that they have their customary residence.
These forms, then, only serve to avoid duplications and to
check the names on the household form. The household
form is- the basis of the census. Every Belgian or foreigner,
whether present or not at the time of the taking of the cen-
sus in the house where he customarily resides, ought to be
inscribed on the household form sent into that house. The
total of the persons whose names appear on the household
form constitute the population de jure. Household must
not be confused with family. The instructions of 1900
precisely define these terms, stating that "the household
(menage) is a small or collective unit made up either of one
person hving alone or by a combination of two or more
persons who, whether united or not by family bonds, cus-
tomarily reside in the same habitation and there have a
common life."
The household form and eventually the special form must
be completed by the head of the household, who must give
the facts corresponding to the situation as of midnight,
December 31.
The taking of the returns at the houses of the inhabitants
is begun January 2, by census agents. It is the duty of
these agents to check the accuracy of the declarations.
The following are the steps successively taken: first, the
filling in of a special return of the number of houses and
households; second, transcribing on individual cards the
facts mentioned for each person in the household form; third,
calculation, from the number of these cards, of the number
of inhabitants, by classes, and the writing of this number
BELGIUM 139
in the special returns. The counting of the individual cards
has replaced the checking system used prior to 1876 in mak-
ing the abstracts from the household forms.
The communal administration transcribes the numbers
from these returns into recapitulation tables, and sends
them to the Minister of the Interior. A specially created
census bureau there verifies and coordinates the tables
drawn up by the communal administrations, and proceeds
to the work of recapitulation by administrative arrondisse-
ments, by provinces and for the kingdom. The infant
population was classified in 1890 according to the language
customarily used in the household of which they formed a
part; in 1900, as in 1880, they have been considered as not
speaking any language.
The statistics of changes in the civil condition of the popu-
lation are published by the Statistical Central Commission;
these may perhaps be considered as a supplement to the
population census, and for that reason assume a real impor-
tance. These statistics were first published in 1857.* They
were at first included in a collection entitled "Documents
Statistiques." These documents were discontinued in 1869,
when they were replaced by the "Annuaire Statistique"
of the kingdom, the first volume of which contained docu-
ments relating to the year 1870. It was thought that the
statistics of the changes in the civil condition and of the
population would be duplicated by the data published in
the statistical annual, and so the former was discontinued.
Later, however, it was seen that the synthetic figures pub-
lished in the statistical annual did not permit of the more
or less thorough study of those statistics — one of the most
essential requirements for general statistics.
The statistics of the changes in the civil condition of the
population were then resumed, beginning with the year
1867; the first of the new publications covered the period
1867 to 1881; it was published in 1883; since that time the
publication has appeared regularly. It contains twelve
* Compare BvlMin of the Central Commission of Statistics. Vol. XV, p. 423.
140 MEMORIAL VOLUME
parts: movement of the population; immigration and emi-
gration; changes in the civil condition of the population;
number of marriages, births, and deaths, as well as still-born
and other infants born dead; age of decedents; respective
ages of brides and grooms at time of marriage; special statis-
tics of twins and other multiple births; civil condition of
brides and grooms; civil condition of married decedents;
causes of deaths; special statistics of deaths by violence;
special statistics of deaths from suicide.
The annual observation of the movement of the popula-
tion is, like the general census of the population, decentral-
ized; it is established by communal administrations which
utilize for the purpose the civil registers and the registers of
the population. These lists are transmitted to the central
administration where the oflBce of general statistics verifies
them, transcribes them in special registers and makes a
recapitulation according to the administrative territorial
divisions. The central bureau of the Minister of the Interior
has only to transcribe and add the tables. This method is
abandoned in nearly all European countries. The advan-
tages of centralization are evident; it has just been proposed
that the communal administrations limit themselves to
amplifying the tables, the elements of which would then
be abstracted and combined by the Bureau of General Sta-
tistics of the Minister of the Interior. The Statistical Cen-
tral Commission, pleased with the proposition, has just
pronoimced itself in favor of this reform.
We have spoken above of the population registers, the
regular keeping of which, dating from 1846, was sanctioned
by the law of June 2, 1856. The population register is a list
of all the inhabitants having their customary residence in a
coromune, with an indication of their names and Christian
names, place and date of their birth, civil condition, their
legal residence, their occupation, business or position, and
their nationality.
The utility of the population registers manifests itself
under a triple aspect: political, administrative and statis-
BELGIUM 141
tical. The revision of the lists of electors for the legisla-
tive chambers, and the provincial and communal councils,
is made by the communal administration from the facts
noted in the population registers; in police matters these
registers also render valuable services; finally, the regular
keeping of these documents makes it possible to draw up
certain parts of the annual statistics of the movement of
the population, to publish annually the approximate figure
of the population of the kingdom, and even, as in 1896, to
find therein, in case of necessity, the basis for an industrial
census without having recourse in the first instance to a
technical enumeration.
B. Economic Statistics. — ^From the beginning the govern-
ment has concerned itself with the economic elements of
national prosperity. The first statistics on mines, quarries
and metallurgical establishments date from 18S8. The
outlines of these statistics were after some years revised and
completed on the advice of the Statistical Central Com-
mission; a new publication appeared in 1852, relating to
the years 1845 to 1849.
The elements of these statistics are collected by the
corps of mine engineers, centralized by the chief engineers
of a mining district, and finally transmitted to the central
administration which abstracts them by groups of data and
publishes the results. The publication is annual. At the
present time* it appears in a brochure and under the title:
"Statistique des industries extractives et metallurgiques et
des appareils k vapeur en Belgique pour I'annee. . . ."
(Statistics of extractive and metalliu-gic industries and of
steam apparatus in Belgium for the year . . .). They
include detailed tables relating to coal mines, their produc-
tion, expenses, profits and losses; the classification of the
personnel, the wages and the production per employe.
Other summary tables relate to the manufacture of coke
* Since 1901; previous to that year the statistics of mines, etc., appeared
in "Annales des Travaux publics" (up to 1894), and in the "Annates des Mines"
after that. Ever since 1855 they have been the object of special publications.
142 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and of charcoal, to licensed and free metallurgical mines
and to quarries. For these latter businesses, the data relat-
ing to open quarries are assembled by the communal admin-
istrations. The metallurgical industries are also the object
of statistics : they include successively blast-furnaces, steel
works, the manufacture of zinc, of lead and of silver, the
manufacture of iron, and establishments for the working of
iron and steel; steam apparatus is included when account-
ing for the number and power of motors, the number and
the heating surface in square meters of the generators, by
provinces and principal industries. In the provinces which
do not possess mines these data are gathered by the civil
engineers. The publication ends with a table of the acci-
dents occurring in coal mines.
The statistics of extractive and metallurgical industries,
together with certain returns published by the tax authori-
ties relating to industries subject to the excise law, are the
only official Belgian statistics containing data on industrial
production; for this reason they are of special interest.
The statistics of the foreign commerce of Belgium also
date from the first years of national independence. It was
the Minister of the Interior who took the initiative in this,
the first publication embracing the years 1831 to 1834.
Seven oflScial publications appeared successively, the last
relating to the year 1840. The following year the statis-
tics of foreign commerce were placed under the Minister
of Finance, who still actually makes the returns.
The volume of business transactions was at first expressed
by means of "valem-s oflficielles permanentes" (permanent
official values), that is to say, the price at which each article
of merchandise was valued, was fixed, once for all, by the
administration. The list of values was decreed in 1833;
it remained in force until the Order in Council of October
10, 1847, which prescribed an annual revision of values for
such merchandise as formed an important part in trade.
Since that time the system has been generalized. It is
necessary to note, however, that the revised official values
BELGIUM 143
are applied only to such products as are admitted free or
are subject to specific tax; the articles of merchandise taxed
ad valorem must be declared by the importer and exporter.
A special commission of experts each year makes a revision
of the official values. The cost of transportation up to the
Belgian frontier, or beginning from that point, are included
in the value.
The origin and the destination of merchandise is one of
the most important points to be explained. In Belgium,
from 1831 to 1840, it was held that the country of origin
was that from whence the merchandise came at the actual
moment of its passage into Belgium, even when in reality
it originated in another country. The exports by land were
considered as being destined for the country where the
merchandise entered when leaving Belgian soil. On this
principle, however, Belgium appeared to have no. commer-
cial relations with certain states, Switzerland for example.
This rule was abandoned in 1841. Since that date the real
country of origin is sought for, that is to say, the country
from which the merchandise has been expedited on its
destination to Belgium, either directly or in transit through
other countries, even when there has been a transhipment.
In the countries of transhipment the merchandise must not
have become nationalized by being the object of a com-
mercial transaction. The country of destination is indicated
by the exportation; it is the country toward which the mer-
chandise is really sent, no matter whether the article is
Belgian in origin or nationalized.
Between 1831 and 1854 the Belgian statistics presented
foreign commercial products under three general headings:
raw material, produce and manufactured articles; under
the heading of produce was designated products delivered
for consumption in their natural state. This classification
was abandoned in 1854, the merchandise being from that
date enumerated in the rules of the custom house official in
144 MEMORIAL VOLUME
alphabetical order.* In 1907 the principle of systematic
grouping was revived, and in 1908 merchandise was grouped
and presented under four classes: I, live animals; II, bever-
ages and foods; III, raw and simply prepared materials;
IV, manufactured products. There has recently been added
a fifth division relating to gold and silver metals, and gold
and silver coin.
Belgium has taken the initiative in bringing about an
international convention to consider the establishment of
commercial statistics common to the principal nations. The
first convention took place in Brussels in 1910. An inter-
national conference met in the same city in 1913. The
contractual states decided to establish, in addition to the
commercial statistics published by each country, special
statistics based upon a common nomenclature, grouping
the merchandise imported and exported into a limited num-
ber of classes, with an indication of the value and, as far as
possible, of the weight. A common nomenclature was
decreed to this effect; the publication of these special statis-
tics will be assured by an office established in Brussels under
the name of "Bureau international de statistique commer-
ciale"
This bm-eau will publish a bulletin. The convention will
become obligatory, after ratification, beginning with the
first of July, 1914; it is concluded for seven years and may
be tacitly renewed. The signatory states are Germany,
Belgium, Bolivia, Chili, Col6mbia, Cuba, Denmark, San
Domingo, Spain, France, Great Britain, Guatemala, Haiti,
Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Norway, Para-
guay, Dutch East Indies, Peru, Persia, Portugal, Russia,
Siam, Sweden, Switzerland and Uruguay.
The common nomenclature includes the five categories
* In 1906, we drew attention to the importance of these classifications and we
have shown what were the results one might draw from this grouping applied to
Belgium statistics. Compare our article " De quoi se compose le commerce ext^rieur
de la Belgique" (What constitutes foreign commerce in Belgium) in the Revue
economigue intemationaie {International Economic Review) March, 1907.
BELGIUM 145
enumerated above; the total number of articles of mer-
chandise enumerated is 186.
The comparison of the data relating to international com-
merce cannot fail to lead to some general information of the
highest interest. It is to be desired that some of the large
states which have not yet become signatories to the conven-
tion will soon join with those who have given their adhesion.
To the commercial statistics are joined several statistics
relating to industries subject to a particular fiscal rule
(excise duties). These industries are placed under the
control of government agents, and in that way their pro-
duction can be known. With the mining and metallurgical
industries supervised by mine engineers, these are the only
Belgian industries of which some data relating to their pro-
duction are known. Statistics are applicable to breweries,
vinegar factories, distilleries, sugar factories and refineries,
and to tobacco culture.
The most important contribution to economic statistics
is that furnished by the censuses of industry. We have
set forth, in a few words, the Census of 1846 organized by
Quetelet. It remains for us to describe, briefly, the Censuses
of 1880, 1896 and 1910.*
The industrial census of December 31, 1880, was decreed
by the law of May 25, 1880, and was carried out at the same
time as the census of population and of agricultiu-e. From the
view point of the extent of statistical operations, it presents
a special character. The Statistical Central Commission
had expressed the opinion that it was impossible to extend
the census indiscriminately to all industries and trades;
according to the Central Commission it was because too
much had been attempted in the industrial census of 1866
that nothing worth while had been secured. Therefore it
was decided to limit the return to 57 branches of industry
only, out of the 111 in the methodical classification. The
list of these industries is available in the official publication.
* Reproduced from the statement (ExposS) of the Methods of the Census of
Industry and Commerce, December 31, 1910.
11
146 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Even with these restrictions, the census could not be
carried out in an absolutely complete fashion, for the ques-
tionnaires were obviously subject to errors or showed omis-
sions. Serious difficulties resulted, and these were consid-
ered so unsurmountable for certain industries that they were
abandoned, the facts obtained being absolutely incomplete.
Such was the case for the sea fisheries, the manufacture of
carpets, woolen and silk tapestries, the manufacture of laces
and of tulle and blond, the construction of sewing and quilt-
ing machines, the construction of telegraph and telephone
apparatus, public works enterprises, and the transportation
of mail, of passengers, and of merchandise by ordinary
roads, by railways, and by navigation.
It was seen also that, after the abstracting of the docu-
ments, the data relating to industrial apparatus, the return
for which had been asked for on the instructions and ques-
tionnaires, were incomplete or defective. As they appeared
to be too vague, it was thought best not to publish them.
On the other hand, the limits of some industries were ex-
tended. The total number of industries taken into account
was 49.
The information relating to these industries was collected
by the aid of questionnaires. These documents were of four
kinds : first, the personal census; second, the census of motors,
steam boilers and generators; third, a census of industrial
apparatus, with the exception of hand tools; fourth, the
census of production.
In the personal returns the attempt was made to learn the
position held, the number and sex of the persons employed
in the industrial undertakings, the average duration of
employment and the time of employment, the wages of the
laborers per day (in money, in kind, or in share of profits).
The census of motors, steam boilers and generators aimed
to enumerate the number and power of the motors and the
customary steam pressure and the number of simple steam
generators.
BELGIUM 147
It has been stated that the information relating to appa-
ratus was too incomplete to be published.
Finally, as regards production, the census aimed to deter-
mine the number of products according to the nature of the
products, and also the value of the annual production.
The Census of 1880 revealed the existence in Belgium of
26,522 industrial establishments, divided among the 49
branches of industry considered; the number of employers
was 28,096, the number of clerical employes, 15,508, of
laborers, 384,065; the number of motors, 13,113, developing
a horse-power of 242,435. As to the production, its value
was estimated to be, according to the census, 2,177 million
francs.
The Census of October 31, 1896, decreed by the law of
June 29, 1896, was organized by the Order in Council of
July 22, following. This census, the methods and results
of which have been described in volume XVIII of the publi-
cation, presents, in comparison with former enumerations,
a certain number of characteristic features which it is useful
to recall. In the first place, its generahty: it was exteiided
to all industries and trades, including home work, which had.
not been enumerated since the Censuses of 1846 and 1880,
and transportation industries, which were excluded in 1846,
and the collection of the data for which had been given up
in 1880. The only Belgian information to which that of
1896 is comparable, subject to the omissions which have
just been noted, is the industrial enumeration made fifty
years earlier, in 1846.
The Census of 1896 presents also the characteristic of
not being immediately preceded nor accompanied by any
general enumeration. To obtain knowledge of the em-
ployers and heads of workingmen's families to whom the
forms should be sent, use was made of the population regis-
ters, established as a result of the decennial census of the
population, December 31, 1890, and brought down to date
by the communal administrations. The use of these regis-
ters as a basis of census operations made a careful cor-
148 MEMORIAL VOLUME
rection of the documents indispensable; the mechanism
of these supplementary operations, too long to describe in
this place, are stated in detail in volume XVIII (already
cited) of the publication.
Not only were the employers required to answer a ques-
tionnaire, but in addition the heads of workingmen's fam-
ilies were invited to complete the blank forms relating to the
wage-earning population. A special form (Form B) was
sent to every family in which at least one member had been
designated on the population register as a workingmanor
workingwoman in industry or trade. This furnished the
following information concerning every member of the
family: name and Christian name, sex, place of birth, date
of birth, civil condition, degree of relationship to the head of
the household or occupation. A special agent visiting the
home of the family noted for every workingman or working-
woman in industry or trade the following facts: work at
home or outside of house, name and industry of the em-
ployer, commime where establishment was located, street
and number.
It may be said that the essential characteristic of the
Census of October 31, 1896, was the minute correction to
which the documents were subjected. Independently of
internal criticisms to which they were subjected, the forms
intended to contain the answers of the persons enumerated
were distributed to the heads of workingmen's families and
thus served as a reciprocal check. Form B assisted materi-
ally in correcting the faulty returns relating to classification
of industries and to the number of occupied workingmen;
they served also to bring out the omissions in the census of
industrial enterprises of small importance. Other means of
check also supplemented this process of statistical criticism.
From the census of industries there were excluded: the
Belgian government railroads; the various public services
of the local administrations, of an industrial character; the
enterprises pertaining to establishments or institutions of
an unproductive character; the industrial occupations which
BELGIUM 149
are intimately associated with the carrying on of trade; and
industries which may be considered as a prolonging of the
agricultural industry.
The Census of 1896 showed 337,395 enterprises and divi-
sions of enterprises, 1,102,244 persons actively engaged in
enterprises, of whom 842,000 were workingmen and working-
women in private enterprises, among whom 118,000 working-
men and workingwomen worked at home; small industries
(1 to 4 workers) engaged 13.92 per cent, of the working
population; industries of average size (5 to 49 workers) 26.96
per cent. ; large industries (50 to 499 workers) 36.66 per cent. ;
and the largest industries (500 workers and over) 23.46 per
cent.
The Census of 1910 was extended to industry and
commerce. It was taken December 31, by means of two
individual forms distributed by census agents at the homes
of all persons whose names appeared on the household form
used for the population census, as carrying on an industrial
or commercial occupation.
The employers in industry and those engaged in commerce
were required to make answer to the questions in a special
form; these questions concerned the nature of the industry
or of the commerce, the juridical form of the enterprise and
the fact as to whether or not the enterprise listed on the form
was, in its entirety, the only occupation of the employer,
or whether it was a division of a business, the number of
motors and their horse power, whether the sales were whole-
sale or retail (as regards commerce), and finally, the number
of persons employed (members of the family of the employer,
clerical force and wage earners).
The second individual form was for the purpose of collect-
ing the answers of the clerical force, of the workingmen in
factories and the workingmen in homes, and the collabo-
rating workmen of the latter.
The census was entirely centralized. All the forms were
transmitted by the communal administrations to the Bureau
of Labor; that office examined, corrected and abstracted
150 MEMORIAL VOLUME
them. There were 383,094 returns to the communal admin-
istrations to be corrected or completed; 95,537 forms were
discarded, either because they related to categories not
included in the census or because they were duplicates.
The census comprises two parts: the occupational enu-
meration and the industrial enumeration. The occupational
enumeration shows, commune by commune, the number
of persons carrying on an industrial or commercial occupa-
tion, whether they are independent owners of the business,
members of the family of the employer, clerical employes,
workmen, unemployed, the industry or branch of commerce
in which they are employed (38 groups).
In addition, two blanks are reserved for the study of
supplementary occupations. A fourth blank was reserved
for statistics of wage earners and employes working in a
commune other than that of their domicile, the migrations
of workingmen being of considerable importance in Belgium
on account of the easy means of transportation. These
statistics make possible for the first time a study of this
phenomenon in all its details.
The occupational enumeration is published.
The second part, in preparation, is the industrial enumera-
tion. It includes four blanks relating to the nature of the
industries, and their location, the juridical form of the enter-
prises and their extent expressed by the number of working-
men employed and, finally, the sex, age and civil condition
of the workingmen and clerical employes.
There were enumerated on December 31, 1910 (occupa-
tional census) :
For industry: 260,521 employers, 91,693 members of the
families of employers, 86,302 clerical employes, 1,185,381
manual laborers, 1,161 clerks not working, 85,103 manual
laborers not working — a grand total of 1,710,161 persons, to
whom are to be added 8,983 persons carrying on under a
supplementary title an occupation connected withi ndustry.
For commerce: 216,130 employers, 215,696 members of
families of employers, 48,822 clerical employes, 37,711 man-
BELGIUM 151
ual laborers, 1,621 clerical employes not working, 2,783 man-
ual workers not working, making a total of 522,763 persons;
in addition, 24,045 persons carrying on under a supplemen-
tary title a commercial occupation.
Taking into account 5,084 persons enumerated who have
not been classed in a definite group, there were then at the
time of the census 2,238,008 persons carrying on under a
principal occupation heading an industry or commercial
business, and 33,028 persons belonging to these categories
by reason of their supplementary occupation. The popu-
lation of Belgium being 7,417,454 on the same date, the
population engaged in industry or commercial industries
represents more than 30 per cent, of the total.
C. Social Statistics. — ^We have already said that the first
judicial statistics compiled in Belgium were due to the ini-
tiative of Quetelet; aided by Ed. Smits, director of the
statistical bureau, he published a return, including the years
1826 to 1830, and embracing the courts of assize, the cor-
rectional tribunals, and the pohce tribunals. Later the
Department of Justice continued to publish these statistics
at irregular intervals, following the plan of Quetelet. In
1832, there were added statistics of civil and commercial
justice which formed the subject matter of a special publica-
tion. The statistics of criminal justice were established for
the civil year (January 1 to December 31); the statistics of
civil and commercial justice for the judicial year (October
1 to September 30). This arrangement still exists.
After it was decided to publish every ten years an account
of the condition of the kingdom, the judicial statistics dis-
appeared as a special publication. The figures relating to
the activity of the criminal courts during the years 1840 to
1849, and of the civil and commercial courts during the years
1841-1842 to 1849-1850, were included in an account of
the condition of the kingdom for the period 1840 to 1850;
figures for the years 1850 to 1859 for criminal statistics, and
from 1850-51 to 1858-59 for civil statistics, in the account
(I'Expose) for the period 1850 to 1860. Meanwhile, the
152 MEMORIAL VOLUME
figures for the first half of the decade were also published in
the statistical collection published by the Minister of the
Interior.
Beginning with 1860, the judicial statistics were again
made the object of special publications, relating to both
criminal actions and civil and commercial actions. Four
volumes appeared in succession, embracing, first, the years
1861 to 1867*; second, the years 1868 to 1875; third, the
years 1876 to 1880; fourth, the years 1881 to 1885.
All the statistics published up to this time were no more
than a resume of those compiled by the various tribunals or
judicial oflfices. Between 1844 and 1849 it was thought
best, in order to facilitate the task of the compilers, to re-
quire them to copy daily in the registers sent them by the
Minister of Justice such matters as would be included in the
principal statistical tables. This system did not produce
all of the results that were expected, especially in the matters
relating to criminal statistics. On the other hand, the
publications conforming to those of French criminal statis-
tics gave the individual characteristics of the delinquents
and the causes of crime in insuflBcient detail. The reform of
judicial statistics was made the subject of an investigation
about 1890; but this reform was not actively prosecuted
until 1896, under the direction of our learned colleague, M.
Ch. De Lannoy. The result was a complete revision of the
framework, of the methods of compilation, and of the plan
of publication. Since 1898 the judicial statistics had ap-
peared annually, t From the beginning the reform concerned
itself only with trial courts and courts of judgment. Act-
ually it included besides judicial statistics, properly so called,
the statistics of prisons, those of vagrancy, of pauperism, of
child protection, of deaf-mutes, of the blind, and of the
insane. The courts, the prosecutors and the trial judges
* The new penal code was promulgated in 1867.
t In order to facilitate the transition between the old and the new publica-
tions, there was published for the twelve years included between 1885 and 1898
a statistical resume of the activity of the civil and criminal courts.
BELGIUM 153
are no longer called upon to furnish criminal statistics, ex-
cept facts of an administrative kind. The data relating to
condemned persons, to their antecedents, to the penalties
they have incurred, are derived directly by the Bureau of
Statistics of the Ministry of Justice from the briefs in the
pigeon-holes of the courts.
This method gives all the necessary guarantees of accuracy
and gives to the judicial statistics designated "criminal
statistics" a special value from the scientific point of view.
The Bureau of Labor has brought an important contribu-
tion to social statistics through its general inquiries and
monographs on wages, and on the hours of labor of wage
earners in industry. The general Census of October 31,
1896, attempted to collect circumstantial data relating to
rates of wages by means of a questionnaire addressed to all
employers. The heads of business concerns were invited
to give, separately, for male and female wage earners, ages
over sixteen years and under sixteen years, and by kind of
employment for each classification of wage earners, the
total wages paid, at the last normal payment, the number of
wage earners between whom this sum was divided, the total
number of days work. By normal pay was understood that
which had not been affected by any external events such as
strikes, stoppages for repairs, etc. If the last payment had
not been normal, it was necessary to choose a former pay-
ment conforming to that requirement.
The questionnaire required, besides, the facts relating to
extra payments, bonuses, participation in profits, and other
advantages, and particularly the method of fixing wages
(by the hour, by the day, by the task, by the piece or by the
job).
This method, which represented a great improvement over
the methods previously employed, still did not make it
possible to study the effective distribution of wages in the
class of wage earners, for in the same special line of work
there are numerous differences between individuals in the
154 MEMORIAL VOLUME
matter of wages. The statistics of wages were compiled
by the aid of two supplementary operations: the forms of
the small industries (up to twenty wage earners) were sent
back to the employers and they were invited to subdivide
the occupational classifications into as many groups as
there were different rates of wages.
For the establishments which did not fall under the head-
ing of small industries, the statistics of wages were compiled
by agents from the Bureau of Labor, who were charged with
the collection, from the pay-roll of the actual wages of the
individuals.
The purpose of these supplementary statistics was to de-
termine with absolute exactness the daily wages of the
wage earners affected, to the end of the month of October,
1896, and to work out the number of hours during which
they were normally occupied during that period. The notion
of an average wage was therefore completely disregarded.
In this way the wages of 671,511 wage earners were col-
lected and it has been possible to determine exactly the actual
daily wage of 612,892 of these, from the pay-roll of the em-
ployer. We do not know of another example of so de-
tailed statistics of wages, nor so extensive, considering that
the total number of wage earners included in the census
exceeded 671,000.
In the coiu"se of the inquiry into wages, considerable
modifications took place in the rates of wages of workers in
coal mines. The Bureau of Labor decided to fix, by means
of a supplementary inquiry, the direction and extent of the
variations reported in this particular field. The results
were published in 1901, under the title "Statistique des
salaires dans les mines dehouille" (Statistics of wages in
coal mines. October, 1896, May, 1900).
Finally, to complete the facts previously gathered, the
Bureau of Labor undertook a new inquiry concerning wages
in textile industries, as of October 31, 1901, and a second
inquiry relating to the wages in metal industries, as of
October 31, 1903. These inquiries, following the census
BELGIUM 155
method of 1896, endeavored to find the individual wages
and abandoned the notion of an average wage. A special
agent of the Biu-eau of Labor visited all the establishments
employing more than ten wage earners, a Kst of which had
been prepared through the aid of the archives of the census
of 1896; 709 firms were thus visited in the textile industry,
and in only nine among these was an answer refused to the
agent of the Bureau of Labor. Everywhere else the data
relating to the rates of wages were taken from the pay-rolls
of the employers and in most cases the facts were copied
personally by the agent of the Bureau of Labor. The wages
of 71,512 wage earners in the textile industry were thus de-
termined and compared with those of 1896. The same
methods were adopted for the inquiry relating to the wages
in the metal industries, in the course of which data were
collected relating to the wages of 84,136 wage earners,
grouped in 1,083 estabHshments.
The statistics of industrial accidents may be considered
in social statistics, although in certain of their aspects they
equally concern economic statistics. The Bureau of Labor
published in 1912 the first return relating to this important
problem which has appeared in Belgium. The method
followed has recently been set forth in that publication in
great detail, making it unnecessary for us to here describe
it otherwise than very briefly.
The reparation made for industrial accidents is regulated
by a law of December 24, 1903. By virtue of this law the
institutions which have assumed the UabiKty of the em-
ployers are required to collect all the facts relating to these
accidents and their results, and to communicate them to the
Biu-eau of Labor. This oflSce thus disposes of the complete
material gathered according to instructions and controlled
by itself.
The first results of the statistics of industrial accidents
appeared in 1912. The Bureau of Labor has taken care to
estabhsh the industrial divisions in such manner as to make
it possible to calculate the risk peculiar to each industry;
156 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and the enterprises which employ a motor have been sep-
arately compiled. Special attention has been given to the
nomenclature of industries so as to group homogeneous
risks; finally, the study of accidents has been made in ac-
cordance with the classification of the wage earners by age
and by rates of wages.
There remain to be mentioned in this domain the statis-
tics of strikes and lockouts published by the Bureau of Labor,
but we omit to analyse them as it would unduly extend this
statement.
III. Officyial Statistical Publications of Belgium. 18S0-19H,
The list of statistical publications appearing in Belgium
has been prepared by the Department of General Statistics,
established in the Ministry of the Interior, and appear in
the Statistical Annual of Belgium for 1914. The list stops
with the year 1910; we have completed it down to April 30,
1914. (See page 166 et seq.)
Chapter III. The Future of Statistics
While it is not always easy to describe in the form of a
r^sum^ a system as old, varied and complex as the statistics
of Belgium, one can nevertheless try to present a statement
as accurate and impartial as possible. But those who have
taken it upon themselves to collect this series of articles
expect something more of us; they desire that the authors
of the descriptive memoirs express their views as to the
future development of statistics. The science which we
cultivate is the first to warn us against the dangers of prophe-
cies. The thankless r61e of a prophet does not tempt us.
We do not know along what lines the statistics of Belgium
will develop and toward what ideal they will tend. We shall
simply indicate in what direction they could, according to
our judgment, reach their fullest development.
If one studies the list of statistical publications which
have appeared in Belgium, one can hardly forbear homage
BELGIUM 157
to the industry, ingenuity and perseverance which was
needed to accumulate such a wealth of information. The
works published by our administrative services are many
and various; they embrace the most diverse aspects of social,
economic and moral activity. The origin of a great many of
them dates back to the very first years of our political inde-
pendence, and one must admire the pluck of the provisional
government, not yet any too firmly estabhshed after the
revolution of 1830, which at that critical moment decreed
the establishment of a statistical office, thereby expressing
its faith in the continuity and success of the task of national
emancipation.
Many of our statistics have had in their time the merit of
novelty. The industrial and agricultural censuses of 1846
served for a long time as models which in their day and man-
ner enriched the statistical methods with a multitude of
ideas and interesting and novel methods. Special merit
may be claimed for the boldness and novelty of the statistics
of wages of the industrial census of 1896, so perfectly planned
by our colleague, and at that time co-worker, M. Em. Wax-
weiler, statistics which furnished the most reliable data on
the wages of 612,892 laborers out of 671,596 enumerated.
The statistics of industrial accidents have certainly bene-
fited, as was to be expected from the acquired experience;
the revision and presentation of the material have been
considerably improved upon and the financial aspect of the
problem has been elucidated by the great attention to detail
and accuracy. Finally, it is worthy of notice that, in that
part of the industrial and commercial census which has just
appeared and which deals with occupations, there is to be
found the most detailed information relating to incidental
occupations and to the migration of laborers, a phenomenon
so interesting to trace in a small country like Belgium where
the means of transportation are numerous and inexpensive.
These opinions of things with which we are most familiar
by no means exclude a similar opinion on any other division
of Belgian statistics.
158 MEMORIAL VOLUME
We have had in Belgium an illustrious statistician, a man
of many excellent parts. The name of Quetelet is too well
known to need recalling, but through the rays of his glory
one may discover some stars whose brilUancy is dimmed by
that of this eminent savant.
Statistical science has brought out in Belgium a group of
remarkable men who have given us a large number of val-
uable works, some of which are beyond compare.
A general view, however, of the development of Belgian
statistics does not leave one with an unreservedly favorable
impression.
While certain divisions of the statistics are treated in a
comprehensive and methodical manner, others are of a more
fragmentary character and without a definite plan. Omis-
sions and duplication caused by lack of coordination between
the different ministerial departments are frequently met
with. Certain branches of statistics are entirely neglected,
as, for instance, financial statistics. Others, started many
years ago, have made no progress and have not been devel-
oped, such as the statistics of industrial production. In
one and the same ministerial department several oflBces are
occupied with statistics, and jealously defend their admin-
istrative functions to the neglect of harmony between their
methods and definitions. Such lack of "team-play" mili-
tates directly against the perfecting of the personnel and the
material, and the employment of costly machinery, the use
of which is recognized as necessary.
The Belgian statistics are decentralized. We do not
speak merely of that form of archaic decentralization which
is now found only in a few isolated cases. In those in-
stances the communal administrations publish their own
statistical reports, which the central office, after a purely
arithmetical verification, file away without being able to
verify their accuracy.
If this method may be defended in very large countries,
such is not the case in Belgium where the statistical mate-
BELGIUM 159
rial is not so extensive that its compilation and tabulation in
a central office is impracticable.
The decentralization which we have in mind concerns the
division of the work between nine or ten ministerial depart-
ments. We have seen that this was regretted by Quetelet.
At present the demographic statistics are assigned to the
Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry of Finance has
charge of the commercial statistics and shipping; and this
same department also concerns itself with certain industries
and publishes yeports on the sea fisheries which are really
collected by the Department of Marine. The judicial sta-
tistics are compiled by the Ministry of Justice together with
certain other more or less unexpected schedules, such as the
statistics of the insane, deaf-mutes, blind persons, and bank-
ruptcies.
The Department of Highways deals with land and water
transportation, and the Department of Railways has charge
of transportation by rail. The labor statistics are taken care
of by the Department of Labor, but several other offices of
the Ministry of Industries and Labor concern themselves
with related questions, etc.
Briefly, it is always difficult to know exactly which minis-
terial department has charge of collecting and publishing
data in any one division of statistics.
The advantages which would accrue from a centralization
of statistical operations are scientific, administrative and
practical.
(a) Unity of methods, comparative statistical criticism,
elimination of duplication, a common working plan, perfect
regularity of the publications in the different departments,
are not possible except under a centralized system.
The Statistical Central Commission had for its very pur-
pose the realization of a general management and, to a cer-
tain extent, of a uniform plan of execution. But too often
this program is still no more than a theory. There are
numerous reasons in law and fact which explain why this is so.
It is left to the discretion of the heads of the ministerial de-
160 MEMORIAL VOLUME
partments as to when to consult the Statistical Central Com-
mission with regard to work which they intend to undertake,
or to propose modifications which they consider desirable
of a plan previously adopted. On its part, the commission
can only deplore the absence of statistics which they regard
as interesting but which they have neither the means to
realize themselves nor to obtain through others. These un-
fortunate circumstances are responsible for the lack of a
imiform plan apparent in the mass of our publications. The
Statistical Central Commission has always shown great activ-
ity, but it can not exceed its authority, nor increase its powers.
(b) Instead of having a number of unimportant and in-
conspicuous statistical offices, mere pawns on the adminis-
trative chess board, centralization would give us an influen-
tial administration which could defend its views and obtain
their acceptance.
The funds appropriated could be better distributed and
be used to better advantage than under the present system;
it is even probable that substantial economies could be
effected.
The greatest advantage, however, would be that a cen-
tralized service would have at its disposal a methodically
trained office force familiar with its special needs and work-
able to its maximum of efficiency. No office in Belgium
commands a force large enough to undertake an important
task, recurring periodically, such as a census.
We should also obviate the difficulty arising from the
employment of a temporary force for work of this kind,
selected from motives quite foreign to statistics. At best,
the least objectionable course would suggest a few months'
education for newcomers, and there would still be found
unassimilable elements among them. In Belgium there are
no special proofs of aptitude required before admission to the
departments which deal with one or the other branch of
statistics. The titles, salaries, promotions, are the same as
those adopted for other administrative services. While indi-
viduals have made statistical science their vocation by spe-
BELGIUM 161
cializing in scientific researches, others may have come into
the service through accidental administrative combinations,
or in the hope of improving their position. It is possible
to conceive of a more methodical organization.
The education of the professional statistician ought to be
general and special. A statistician can acquire a general
education in a university course comprising philosophy,
pohtical economy or mathematics; a fit discipline in the
development of the reasoning faculties. None of these
studies should exclude the others; of matheniaticians we
would require as thorough a study of logic as of pohtical
economy; of economists should be demanded a knowledge
of certain branches of mathematics; and of doctors of philos-
ophy a knowledge of the conceptions of political economy
and mathematics.
The training of the statistician should be special, like that
in the professions.
The central statistical service should have as many sections
as there are divisions or applications: demography, moral
statistics, social statistics, economic statistics, financial and
administrative statistics. The whole service should be
under an official bearing the title Director General or Presi-
dent: and at the head of each section should be a statistician
with the rank of Director. No one should be appointed to
take charge of a section without having worked in each other
section long enough to acquii-e a practical knowledge of the
different methods. One or two assistant statisticians would
have to assist the head of a section in directing the work of
the clerks; these assistants should be chosen from clerks who
have shown special aptitude and efficiency in actual statis-
tical work.
This organization would not be complete, however, if it
did not succeed in establishing a firm and durable link be-
tween itself and the intellectual classes of the country. The
thing most lacking in our statistical offices, which are, so to
speak, dovetailed into a congeries of administrative insti-
tutions, is sufficient contact with the public, a defect which
12
162 MEMORIAL VOLUME
is largely responsible for the manifest indifiFerence to statistics
on the part of the masses. An eminent statistician, M. de
Foville, once said "there are even today many people who
seem to think that statistics are for the exclusive use of statis-
ticians— an error like that of believing that bread is made for
the bakers only." If this error has spread, it is because
everything has been done to bring it into being and nothing
neglected to foster it. Those who ultimately use statistics
are legion, but they are carefully kept away from statistical
oflBces and do not succeed in making their demands heard,
and receive but tardy and incomplete satisfaction. The
central statistical oflSce should keep in intimate and contin-
uous contact with industrial, commercial and financial
interests; it should be carefully informed on subjects and
questions of special interest to these groups. It should place
at the disposal of the cities and communities of the nation
all the information which concerns them; and it should pub-
lish a periodical for quick information kept well up to date
on all economic, financial, demographic and moral phenom-
ena. This task would fall chiefly upon the president of the
oflBce, who should be a young, active, clear-headed man. The
central statistical service ought also to be accessible to stu-
dents of political economy and statistical science in the
Universities and commercial high schools. We have in
Belgium five or six courses in statistics with many students.
But how many of these have a clear idea of an analysis, of
the advantage of this method, or that machine? What we
are striving for is not merely, as M. Waxweiler would have it,
to found a seminary from which the future functionaries
can be recruited. Our aim is more far-reaching; our ob-
jective broader. We would initiate our future men of
affairs, bankers, merchants, manufacturers, into the methods
and resources of statistics so that all would seriously make
use of them.
In other words, the central statistical service ought to be
a veritable scientific laboratory where anyone who so desires
can come and work. It is remarkable that the utilization
BELGIUM 163
of published statistics is generally narrowly restricted. Too
often the analyses and deductions are dry and lacking life
and detail. It is almost impossible that it should be other-
wise, for a single author has neither the time nor the inclina-
tion to illuminate and enlarge upon the aspects of the prob-
lems for which the statistics oflfer or ought to offer a solution.
All this would be different if a movement were stirred up
among the intellectual classes of the country and the young
students were encouraged to come and work in the offices of
the central service, and to extract from the official publica-
tions all the conclusions they contain. Carefully compiled
statistics contain a wealth of information; but too often they
remain unused or are used in an incomplete or biassed fashion.
We are, therefore, of the opinion that official statistics should
be so presented as to allow of their largest possible use, that
the summaries be numerous and detailed, that the original
documents be always at the disposal of investigators and,
finally, that the administration limit itself to drawing general
conclusions from its works, but take good care to popularize
and distribute them, stimulating a scientific rivalry among
the learned public with the view to develop them and go to
the bottom of things.
In a centralized system of statistics the institution of the
Central Commission, as it is organized in Belgium, loses its
raison d'itre. And yet, the existence of a consulting body
is absolutely indispensable to the control of the central serv-
ice, and to the maintenance of a permanent Hnk between
the departmental administrations and the statisticians.
The Central Commission should be transformed into a
Superior Council of Statistics. It should be composed of
scientific and administrative experts, appointed by the king
upon the recommendation (with a certain number of votes)
of the learned bodies, all the section chiefs and the president
of the central service taking equal part in it.
We have questioned our colleagues, professors of Belgian
statistics, as to the advantage of centrahzation and as to the
qualifications needed in statistical officials. Among the
164 MEMORIAL VOLUME
replies received we note the following which comes from M.
Waxweiler and which we quote in part, verbatim :
The Director and his co-workers must hold a university diploma vouching not
only for statistical science but also for general attainments in social sciences in
general. Moreover, they must have passed through the administrative routine or
have had a sufficient experience in the conduct of a complete statistical inquiry, that
is to say, from its inception to its readiness for publication.
The University training, so far as it deals with statistical science, must not only
extend to the study of statistical processes, such as the theory of probabilities and
the mathematical analysis of fluctuations, but it must also concern itself with the
study of statistics already published and must include the personal preparation ot
two or three works on applied statistics.
Moreover, there ought to be some means of assuring to the management of the
Statistical Bureau as much freedom as possible from the administrative atmosphere.
M. Waxweiler suggests, for instance, such means as the
formation of a hbrary attached to the general management,
the organization of periodical meetings of the chiefs of the
service, the institution of a "seminaire," the assignment of
the execution of certain investigations to all the co-workers,
the assurance, to each collaborator in an investigation, that
his name and personahty will be made known.
One thus sees that our eminent colleague suggests a large
number of measures of which we have already approved or,
at least, he indicates plans similar to many of those which
we have advocated. At the same time we would suggest
the one exception that the Central Bureau, and that alone,
ought to assume the responsibility for the investigations
undertaken and the work published. In statistical matters
the aids which are rendered to the author of the program or
to him who directs the investigations are so numerous and
important that it would be a real injustice to give credit to
any one person, no matter how interesting he may be.
(c) From the practical standpoint:
At present, being divided among the different ministerial
departments, the statistical offices possess but mediocre
resources and a fortuitous equipment. The way they are
organized presents a direct and insurmountable obstacle to
the improvement of the statistical mechanical appliances.
A complete installation of all the machinery used in other
BELGIUM 165
countries would be ruinous; moreover, this mechanism would
not really pay unless it were used continuously, upon a large
scale and with a view to intensive production, conditions
which can, of course, exist only under a centralized system.
We will not speak of the oflSces which are rarely suited to
their purpose.
The simpHfication which would result from centralization,
the econpmy in personnel, in time and in money would more
than pay for the initial expenditure.
We would like to see the Statistical Central Service housed
in a large building away from the beaten track in attractive
surroundings, on simple and harmonious lines. We have
in mind a building with a central front part set off by a few
steps leading to an entrance hall, the directors' office and
waiting room on either hand. In the background there
would be a spacious semi-circular library with galleries; from
this semi-circle five or six spacious wings should radiate on
a fanlike plan. Each of these wings would be occupied by a
special branch of statistics, such as demography, social and
economic statistics, etc. At the ends nearest the semi-circle,
containing the library, are the offices of the chiefs of the
respective branches. From these offices the wings increase
in width towards their farther end, dovetail fashion, and
should all be connected by a glazed corridor affording easy
communication. The side walls should contain no windows
but be left free for papers and books. The lighting should
come from above. Instead of a second floor there would be
a large basement court surrounded by petty offices and
approached by ramps. In this basement there would be
iron shelves for statistical material, the archives and book-
storage. Here also would be the sanitary arrangements, a
sterilization room for documents, vacuum cleaning and
central heating systems, and electric elevators to carry bulle-
tins about the work rooms.
This is our conception of the future of statistics. The
reality is still far distant; but let us bear in mind that to-
day's dream has often become tomorrow's reality.
May 1, 1914.
PUBLICATIONS STATISTIQUES OFFICIELLES DE
LA BELGIQUE DE 1830 X 1914
OUVBAGES GeNEBAUX.
Documents atatistiques sur le Royaume de Belgigue, recueillis et publics par le
Ministre de I'lnt^rieur.
3» publication officielle. 1836, 1 volume; 4» publication officielle. 1838, 1 vol-
ume; 5° publication officielle. 1840, 1 volume; 6° publication officielle. 1841, 1
volume.
Documents statistiques publics parle D^partement de I'IntSrieur avec le concours
de la commission centrale de statistique.
Tome 1, 1857; tome II, 1858; tome III, 1859; tome IV, 1860; tome V, 1861; tome
VI, 1862; tome VII, 1863; tome VIII, 1864; tome IX, 1865; tome X, 1866; tome
XI, 1867; tome XII, 1868; tome XIII, 1869.
Annuaire statistique de la Belgigue (Minist&re de I'lnt&ieiU', Administration de la
Statistique gtofirale). Publication annuelle. 1" annee, 1870.
Bulletin trimestriel public par le Bureau de la Statistique generale du Minist^re de
rinterieur. 1™ ann^e, n° 1 — Septembre 1909.
IUsum,S des rapports sur la situation administrative des provinces et des communes
de Belgigue pour 1840, presente au Roi par le Ministre de I'lutfirieur. 1841, 1
volume (envisage partiellement la p^riode d^cennale 1831-1840).
Expose de la situation du Royaume (pSriode dScenncde de 18^1-1850), public par
le Ministre de I'lntfirieur, 1852, 1 volimie.
Id. (piriode dScennale 1851-1860). 1865, 3 volumes.
Id. de 1861 & 1875, publie par les soins de la Commission centrale de statistique,
1885, 2 volumes.
Id. de 1876 & 1900, redige sous la direction de la Commission centrale de statis-
tique.
Tome I, 1907; tome II, 1912; tome III, 1914.
Bulletin de la Commission centrale de statistique (Ministere de I'lntdrieur. Admin-
istration de la Statistique Generale).
Tome I, 1843; tome II, 1845; tome III, 1847; tome IV, 1851; tome V, 1853; tome
VI, 1855; tome VII, 1857; tome VIII, 1860; tome IX, 1866; tome X, 1866; tome
XI, 1869; tome XII, 1872; tome XIII, 1878; tome XIV, 1881; tome XV, 1883;
tome XVI, 1890; tome XVII, 1897 (avec en annexe Y Album de statistique graphique.
— Demographic et hygiine de la ville de Bruxelles — par M. le docteur E. Janssens) ;
tome XVIII, 1904; tome XIX, 1906; tome XX, 1909.
TeBBITOIHE et PoPtriATION.
Statistique territoriale du Royaume de Belgigue, bas^e sur les r&ultats des opera-
tions cadastrales executles jusqu'^ la fin de 1834, publiee par le Ministre des Fi-
nances. 1839-1853, 2 volumes.
Recherehes sur la reproduction et le mortalitS de I'hom/me aux diffSrents Ages et sur la
popvlaiion de la Belgigue d'apris le recensement de 1829, par MM. A. Quetelet et
Ed. Smits. 1" recueil officiel, 1832, 1 volume.
BELGIUM 167
Population. Recensement ghiSral (15 octobre 1846), public par le Ministre de
rintfirieur. 1849, 1 volume.
Id. (31 dfcembre 1856). 1861. 1 volume.
Id. (31 d^cembre 1866). 1870, 1 volume.
Tableau de le population du Royaume (population de residence habituelle, dite de
droit) d^termin^e par le recensement g£n€ral du 31 dScembre 1876 (Miniature de
rint^rieur). 1877, 1 volume.
Population. Recensement gSniral (31 d6cembre 1880), public par le Ministre de
rinterieur. 1884, 1 volume.
Id. du 31 d6cembre 1890. 1893, i volumes.
Id. du 31 d^cembre 1900. 1903, i volumes.
Id. du 31 decembre 1910. 1913, 2 volumes (un volume reste k paraltre).
Population. Relev6 dScennal 1831 & ISlfi. — Mouvement de VUat civil de 1840 —
public par le Ministre de I'lnt^rieur. 1842, 1 volume.
Population. Mouvement de I'^at civil pendant I'annee 1841, public par le Min-
istre I'lutfirieur. 1843, 1 volimie.
Id. pendant I'ann^e 1842, 1844, 1 volume; ann€e 1843, 1844, 1 volume; ann^e
1844, 1845, 1 volume; annte 1845, 1846, 1 volume; annfie 1846, 1848, 1 volume;
ann^ 1847, 1843, 1 volume; ann€e 1848, 1849, 1 volume; ann^e 1849, 1850, 1 vol-
ume; ann£e 1850, 1851, 1 volume.
Staiistique du mouvement de I'Mat civil et de la population du Royaume pen-
dant les ann^s 1867 k 1881 (Extrait du tome XV du Bulletin de la Commission
eentrale de staiistique). 1883, 1 volume.
Id. pendant I'annte 1882 (Ministfire de I'lnterieur. Extrait du Moniteur beige).
1883, 1 volume; annee 1883, 1884, 1 volume; ann£e 1884, 1885, 1 volume;
annee 1885, 1886, 1 volume.
RelevS officiel du chiffre de la population du Royaume par pi-ovisce, par arrondisse-
ment administratif et par commune & la date du 31 decembre 1886 (Minist&re de
rinterieur. Extrait du Moniteur beige du 14 juillet 1887). 1887, 1 brochure.
Publication annuelle.
StatisHque du mouvement de la population et de Vital civil en 1890 (Minist^re de
rinterieur. Administration de la Statistique Gdn^rale). 1895, 1 volume.
Id. en 1900, 1904, 1 volume.
Htoienb. Statistique Medicale.
Statistique mMicale de I'armSe beige. F^riode de 1868-1869, pr^c^d^e d'une
statistique sur la mortalite dans les hdpitaux et infirmeries militaires pendant les
annfies 1862 k 1867. 1871, 1 volume; p^riode de 1870-1874. 1877, 1 volume;
periode de 1876-1879. 1883, 1 volume; p&iode de 1880-1884. 1886, 1 volume.
Publication annuelle k partir de 1885 (Miuist^re de la Guerre).
Conseil supirieur d'hygihie pubtique. Rapports adressSs au Gouvemement
(MinistSre de I'lnterieur. Administration du service de sante et de I'hygi&ne).
Tome I, annees 1849-1855 k tome XVII, 1908-1909; tomes XVIII et suivants:
im volume annuel.
Rapports des commissions medicates provindales sur leurs travaux pendant les
anuses 1859 k 1868, 1881 et suivantes (les anndes 1869 k 1880 n'ont pas paru).
Publication annuelle (Miniature de I'lnterieur. Administration du service de
sante et de I'hygiene).
168 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Bulletin sp6eial du service de sanU et de Vhygihne publigue. Annies 18!)3 et 1894
(Bulletin mensuel).
Bulletin du service de santS et de I'hygiene publigue. Annees 1895 4 1905 (Bulletin
mensuel).
Bulletin du service de santi et de Vhygiine. Annies 1906 et 1907 (Bulletin mensuel) .
Bulletin de V Administration du service de santi et de I'hygiene. Annees 1908 et
suivantes (Bulletin mensuel).
Bulletin du service de surveillance de la fabrication et du commerce des denrSes
alimentaires. Compte-rendu mensuel des mesures prises par le Gouvernement en
execution de la loi du i aodt 1890 ainsi que des efifets produits par ces mesures.
Annte 1893 a 1907. Depuis le 1"- Janvier 1908, ces renseignements sont publics
dans le Bulletin de V administration du service de santi et de I'hygiene.
Bulletin sanitaire. Public tous les jeudis ou tons les 15 jours depuis 1901; la
1" ann6e, 1901, a paru en annexe au Bulletin du service de santi et de I'hygiene pub-
Introduction k VAnnuaire sanitaire de la Belgique (Situation au 1<" Janvier 1912)
Bruxelles, 1913.
Enseignement.
Etat de I'instruction supirieure en Belgique. Rapport pr6sent6 aux Chambres
legislatives, le 6 avril 1843, par M. Nothomb, Ministre de I'lnterieur. P^riodes
1794-1814, 1814-1830, 1830-1835, 1835-1843, 1844, 2 volumes.
Rapport sur la situation des universitSs de I'Etat. Rapport annuel aux Chambres
en execution de I'article 30 de la loi du 27 septembre 1835 sur I'enseignement supfiri-
eur. Annees 1836 k 1848.
Etat de I'instruction supirieure donnie aux frais de I'Etat. Premier rapport
triennal presents aux Chambres legislatives. Annfies 1849-1852. 1854, 1 volume.
Situation de I'enseignement supirieur donni aux frais de I'Etat. Rapport triennal
pr&ent^ aux Chambres legislatives (Minist^re des Sciences et des Arts) . Piriode
1853-1855 et suivantes.
Etat de I'instruction moyenne en Belgique. 1830-1842. Rapport pr6sent6 aux
Chambres legislatives, le 1™ mars 1843, par M. Nothomb, Ministre de I'lnterieur.
Precede d'un expose de la legislation anterieure k 1830 et suivi du texte des lois,
arrfitfe et circulaires de 1815 k 1842. 1843, 1 volume.
Id. 1842-1848. Rapport pr&ente le 20 juin 1849. 1849, 1 volume.
Rapport triennal sur I'itat de I'enseignement moyen en Belgique. Pr6sent6 aux
Chambres legislatives (Ministere des Sciences et des Arts). Periodes 1852-1854
(1=) et suivantes.
Etat de I'instruction primaire en Belgique, 1830-1840. Rapport d^cennal prd-
sente aux Chambre legislatives, le 28 Janvier 1842, par M. le Ministre de I'lnterieiu".
Precede d'un expose de la legislation anterieure k 1830 et suivi du texte des lois,
arrStes et circulaires de 1814 a 1840. 1842, 1 volume.
Rapport triennal sur la situation de I'instruction primaire en Belgique. Presents
aux Chambres legislatives (Ministere des Sciences et des Arts). Periodes 1843-
1845 (1°) et suivantes.
Recensement des iUves des itablissements d'instruction moyenne et primaire, soumis
h I'inspection ligale au 31 dicembre 1873, 1 volume.
Rapport sur I'enseignement induMriel et professionnel presente aux Chambres
BELGIUM 169
legislatives par le Ministre de rint^rieur. Annfe 1861-62 k 1865-66. 1867, 1
volume.
Rapport suT I'&tat de V enseignement industriel el prcfessionnel, pr&ent^ le 23 Jan-
vier 1879. 1879, 1 volume.
Rapport sur la situation de V enseignement industriel et professionnel, pr^sent^ aux
Chambres legislatives par le Ministre de rAgriculture, de I'lndustrie et des Travaux
publics. Annies 1880-84. 1886, 1 volume..
Id. par le Ministre de I'lndustrie et du Travail. Annfes 1884-96. 1897, 1
volume.
Rapport sur la situation de V enseignement technique en Belgique. Annies 1897-
1901. 1903, 2 volumes.
Rapport gin^al sur la situation de I' enseignement technique en Belgique. Annies
1902-1910. 1912, 2 volumes.
Rapport sur I'Mat de I' enseignement agricole, pr^sente aux Chambres legislatives
par le Ministre de I'lnterieur. Annuel pour les annees 1861 k 1863.
Situation de V enseignement agricole. Rapport triennal. P^riodes 1864-66 &
1888-90.
Situation de V enseignement vMSrinaire et agricole. Rapport triennal (Ministfere de
rAgricidture et des Travaux publics). Periodes 1891-93 et suivantes.
fipAKGNE. Cooperation. Prevotance.
Compte rendu prSsentS au Conseil d' administration de la Caisse g&nirale d'ipargne
et de retraite. 15 septembre 1865, 31 decembre 1865 et 1866, puis volume annuel
jusqu'en 1884.
Compte rendu des operations et de la situation de la Caisse gSnirale de d'Spargne et
de retraite. Annuel depuis 1885.
Situation de la Caisse gSndrale d'Spargne et de retraite sous la garantie de I'Etai.
Mensuelle, publiee au Moniteur beige.
Les soeiMSs cooperatives en Belgique, 1873-1910 (Ministere de I'lndustrie et du
Travail). 1911, un volume.
Caisses de prhoyance enfaveur des ouvriers mineurs. Examen annual des comptea
(Ministire de I'lndustrie et du Travail). 1" annee, 1846 pour les annees 1840 k
1846; annuel depuis 1877.
Rapport sur la Caisse de prSvoyance et de secours enfaveur des victimes des accidents
du travail (Ministere des Finances) . Annuel, public au Moniteur beige.
Coup d'ceil sur le nombre et la situation des socUMs de secours mutuels en Belgique
au 31 d6cemhre 1860; suivi du texte de la loi du 3 avril 1851 et de I'arrfite royal
du 6 octobre 1852, et de I'etat nominatif de ces societ^s par province (Commission
permanente des societ^s de secours mutuels). 1864, 1 volume.
Rapport sur les comptes. (Commission permanente des societes de secours mu-
tuels). Annees 1852 k 1860.
Rapport sur la situation des sociStSs de secours mutuels, presente par la Commission
permanente des societes de secours mutuels. Un volume annuel de 1861 k 1871,
puis les annees, 1872-1873, 1874-76, 1877-78, 1879, 1880-82, 1883-85, 1886-87,
1888 — 90. Les rapports pour 1870, 1871, 1872-73, sont suivis d'un coup d'ceil sur
la situation des banques populaires et des sodStis des consommation en Belgique et d
I' Stranger et de quelques considSrations ginirales sur la situation de la classe ouvriire en
Belgique.
170 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Rapport sur la situation dea sociStSs mutualistes pendant les annSes 1891-95, pr4-
sent£ au Ministre de I'lndustrie et du Travail par la Commission permanente dea
soci^t^s mutualistes. 1897, 1 volmne.
Rapport Ae la Commission permanente des soeiMis mutualistes pour la pSriode 1896-
1905. 1906, 1 volume.
Justice. Bientaisance.
Staiistique des tribunaux de la Belgique pendant les annto 1826, 1827, lS28i
1829 et 1830, par MM. A. Quetelet et Ed. Smits. 2» publication officielle. 1833.
1 volume.
Compte de l' administration de la justice civile en Belgique, pr6sent£ au Roi par le
Ministre de la Justice.
Annies judiciaires 1832-1833 k 1835-1836 (1 vol. en 1837); 1836-1837 k 1838-
1839 (1 vol. en 1840); 1839-1840 k 1842-1843 1 vol. en 1845).
Compte de l' administration de la justice criminelle en Belgique, pr^sent^ au Roi
par le Ministre de la Justice.
Annfes 1831 k 1834 (1 vol. en 1835); 1835 (1 vol. en 1839); 1836 k 1839 (1 vol.
en 1843); 1840 k 1843 (1 vol. en 1849).
Administration de la justice criminelle et civile de la Belgique. R4sum4 staiistique.
Annies 1841-1850 (1 vol. en 1852. Extrait de I'ExposS dScennal de la situation du
royaume); 1851-1860 (1 vol. en 1865. Extrait de YExposi dScennal de la situation
du royaume); 1861-1867 (1 vol. en 1873); 1868-1875 (1 vol. en 1878); 1876-1880
(1 vol. en 1883); 1881-1885 (1 vol. en 1888); 1886-1897 (1 vol. en 1898).
Staiistique judiciaire de la Belgique. (Minist^re de la Justice.) Annuelle depuis
1898, 1" annte.
Staiistique des prisons de la Belgique. Periode 1841-1850, par M. Ed. Ducp^tiaux
(1 vol. en 1852. Extrait de VExposS dScennal de la situation du royaume); 1851-
1860 (1 vol. en 1864).
Staiistique des prisons de la Belgique. P&iode 1851-1855 (1 vol. en 1857.
Extrait des Documents statistiques publics par les soins du D^partement de
rint^rieur) .
Rapport prSsentS au Ministre de la Justice par I'Administrateur de la S-O/reti pub-
lique et des prisons, le SI dScembre 1869.
Staiistique des prisons et dea Hahlissementa phiitentiairea et de r^orme pour I'ann£e
1875. Rapport pr^sentfi au Ministre de la Justice par M. Berden. 1877, 2 vol.
Id. pour les annees 1876 et 1877, 1879, 1 volume.
Staiistique des prisons et des maisons spSdales de rlforme, pour les ann^ 1878,
1879 et 1880. Rapport pr&entfi au Ministre de la Justice par M. A. Gautier. 1884,
1 volume.
Rapport de la Commission sup$rieure d'inspection dea Stablissements d'aliinis,
iostituee par arrSte royal du 18 novembre 1851. V ann^e 1862.
Rapport de la Commission permanente d'inspection des Hahlissements d'alUnis,
institute par arrgt6 royal du 17 mars 1853. 2", 1853-1864; 3«, 1864-1855; 4", 1856;
5», 1867-1858; 6=, 1869; 7«. 1860; 8", 1862; 9», 1863-1865.
Rapport sur la situation des Hahlissements d^aliinSa. 10", 1866-1871; 11', 1874-
1876; 12«, 1877-1881; pr&ent& par V.-A. Oudart, inspecteur general. 13«, 1883-
1892, presente par le Ministre de la Justice.
Ecolea de rSforme de Ruysselede. Rapport fait per le Minbtre de la Justice, con-
BELGIUM 171
form^ment aux prescriptions de I'art. 9 de la loi du 3 avril 1848, et pr^entl aux
Chambres legislatives le 23 Janvier 1850.
Ecole de riforme de Ruysaelede. i° rapport sur la situation de I'Scole agricole de
r4forme de Ruysselede pendant Tannic 18S0.
Id. S' annfie, 1861.
Scales agricoles de r^orme de Ruysselede et de Beemem. i' rapport sur la situa-
tion des Icoles de reforme pendant I'annle 1832.
Id. 5'. 1853; 6«, 1854; 7», 1855; 8«. 1856; 9«, 1867; 10«, 1868; 11", 1839; 12»,
1860.
Statistique des lib$raliMs au profit des Stablissements religieux et charitables pour
les ann£es 1831 a 1849. Rapport au Roi du Mimstre de la Justice du 25 mai 1830.
Id. poiu" les ann£es 1850 k 1853. Rapport du 6 mars 1854.
Staiistique des hospices et des bureaux de bienfaisance d'apr^ les budgets de I'ex-
ercice 1853, 1 volume. (Ministere de la Justice.)
Commerce.
Tableau ghiSral du commerce de la Belgique avec les pays Strangers pendant les
ann£es 1831, 1832, 1833 et 1834, dressi et public par le Ministre de I'lntlrieur.
1" publication officielle, 1836, 1 volume. Successivement 7 publications o£ScielIes
dont la demi^re, publi£e en 1842, comprend la statistique de I'annle 1840.
Relmi du commerce de la Belgique avec les pays it/rangers pendant I'annte 1840,
public par le Ministre des Finances (Publication pr£liminaire). 1841, 1 volume.
Tableau ghUral du commerce de la Belgique avec les pays Hrangers. (Ministere
des Finances) Annuel depuis 1841.
Tableau du mouvement commercial de la Belgique avec les pays Hrangers, en ce qui
conceme les principales marchandises. V annee 1840, jusqu'en 1895 inclusive-
ment (Ministere des Finances. Annexe au Moniteur beige). Mensuel.
Tableau mensuel du commerce special de la Belgique avec les pays Hrangers, en ce
qui conceme les principales marchandises. V ann€e, 1896 (Ministere des Finances.
Annexe au Moniteur beige). Fait suite au tableau precedent.
Statistique du commerce special de la Belgique avec la France, la Grande-Bretagne
et rirlande, les Pays-Bas et I'Union douanihe aUemande en 1908 et 1909, examine
au point de vue de I'origine et du degri d'ach^vement des produits €chang£s. 1911,
1 volume. (Ministere de I'lndustrie et du Travail.)
Finances.
Budgets annuels des recettes et des dipenses (Ministere des Finances).
Compte ghdral de V Administration des Finances rendu pour I'annle 1830 par le
Ministre des Finances.
Cmnpte rendu des recettes et des d^penses du Boyaume. Annuel pour les ann€es
1831 k 1849.
Compte ghUral de V Administration des Finances. Annuel depuis I'annle 1860.
Compte rendu par les ministres, en exScution des articles U et iS de la loi du 16 mai
18iS, sur la comptabilitS de I'Etat. Annuel depuis I'exercice 1848.
Situation gHSrale du Triaor Public au 1" Janvier. (Ministfere des Finances.)
Statistique des recettes et des dSpenses du Royaume de Belgique. (Ministere des
Finances.) 1840-1865, 1 volume; 1840-1870, 1 volume; 1840-1876, 1 volume;
1840-1880, 1 volume; 1840-1885, 1 volume; 1840-1890, 1 volume; 1840-1896, 1
volume.
172 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Lot de comptes (MinistAre des Finances).
Projet de hi apportani des modifications d, la Ugislation sur la contribution person-
nelle et aux Icris Slectorales coordonnSes Tableaux statistiques. (Miniature des Fi-
nances.) 1879, 1 volume.
RelevS, par commune, des maisons imposies h la contribution fonciere au 1" Janvier
1891. Present^ par le Ministre des Finances k la Chambre des Reprfsentants en
annexe au document n° 261 de la session 1890-1891. 1891, 1 volume.
Etat comparatif du produit des impots directs et indirects (trimestriel) public au
Moniteur beige (Minist^re des Finances).
Statistigue comparative des octrois eommunaux de Belgique pendant les annSes 1828,
1829,1885 et 1836, publiee par le Ministre de I'lnterieur et des Affaires 6trang6res.
1839, 1 volume.
Rapport sur les octrois eommunaux de Belgigue, pr^sente 4. la Chambre des Reprfi-
sentants, le 28 Janvier 1845, par M. Nothomb, Ministre de I'lnterieur. 1845, 2
tomes en 5 volumes.
Rapport du Commissaire des Monnaies au Ministre des Finances. Annuel depuis
1900.
Rapport sur les operations de la Caisse d'amortissement, des dSpdts et consignations.
Annuel. (Ministere des Finances.)
Situation de la Caisse d'amortissement et de la Caisse des dSpots et consignations
(semestrielle) publiee au Moniteur beige (Ministere des Finances).
Bilan et compte des profits et pertes de la Banque Nationale de Belgique (semestriels)
publie au Moniteur beige.
Situation de la Banque Nationale de Belgique (hebdomadaire) publiee au Moniteur
beige.
Tableau statistigue des magistrals, forictionnaires et employes oivils de I'Etat avec
indication de la somme totale de leurs traitements (Ministere des Finances).
Novembre 1855, 1" Janvier 1859, 1" Janvier 1865, 1870, 1876, 1880, 1885, 1890,
1897, 1901, 1906, 1911.
Les magistrats n'y sent compris que depuis 1885.
Agbicultube.
Agriculture. Reeensement g&niral (15 octobre 1846), public par le Ministre de
I'lnterieur, 1850, 4 volumes.
Id. Resumes par arrondissements et par provinces. 1850, 1 volume.
Id. (31 decembre 1856), 1862, 1 volume.
Id. (31 decembre 1866), 1871, 1 volume.
Id. de 1880, publie par le Ministre de I'Agriculture, de I'lndustrie et des Travaux
publics, 1885, 1 volume.
Id. de 1895, public par le Ministre de I'Agriculture et des Travatix publics,
1898-1900, 4 volumes, partie analytique et un atlas.
Id. de 1910, publie par le Ministre de I'Agriculture et des Travaux publics, 1914,
1 volume paru.
Reeensement agricole (Ministere de I'Agriculture et des Travaux publics) (annuel),
annees 1900 a 1910.
Bulletin de I'agricuUure, publie en execution de I'arrgte royal du 16 juillet 1885.
Tome 1, 1885, h tome XXIII, 1907.
Bulletin de V administration de I'agricuUure, publie en execution de I'arrete royal
du 31 decembre 1907. Tome 1, 1908, a tome IV, 1911 (juin).
3"
Id.
i"
Id.
5"
Id.
6°
Id.
7°
Id.
8°
Id.
9°
Id.
BELGIUM 173
Bulletin de I'agriculture et de I' horticulture. Tome I, 1911 (juillet). Publication
mensuelle.
Renseignements statistigues concemant la situation des associations d'intSret agricole
pendant les anuses 1895 et 1896. 1898, 1 volume.
ExposS staHstique de la situation des assoeiations d'intSrSt agricole pendant les
annees 1897 et suivantes. Brochure annuelle.
Monographies agrieoles (publi^es a Toccasion du recensement de 1895) :
1° Region des dunes, 1901.
2° Id. des polders, 1902.
de la Campine, 1899.
sablouneuse des Flandres, 1900.
limoneuse et sablo-limoneuse, 1901.
du pays de Herve, 1900.
du Condroz, 1900.
de I'Ardenne, 1899.
jurassique, 1901.
Industrie.
Industrie. Recensement gSnSral (15 octobre 1846), public par le Ministre de
rint^rieur. 1851, 1 volume.
Industrie. Recensement de 1880. 1887, 3 volumes.
Recensement gSnSral des industries et des metiers (31 octobre 1896), public par le
Ministfere de I'lndustrie et du Travail. 1900-1903, 18 volumes plus I'atlas.
Recensement de I'industrie et du Commerce (31 d^cembre 1910) public par le Minis-
tAre de I'lndustrie et du Travail. 1914 (4 volumes parus).
Mines, U sines miniralurgiques. Machines & vapeur. Rapport au Roi en 1842
(Minist^re des Travaux publics). 1 volume.
Id. annees 1839 k 1844. Compte rendu public par le Ministere des Travaux
publics. 1846, 1 volume.
Mines, miniires, usines min^ralurgiques et machines h vapeur. Annees 1845-
1849. 1852, 1 volume; ann^e 1850. 1855, 1 volume; annees 1851-1855. 1858,
1 volume.
Statistigue des mines, minieres carrihes usines mMallurgiques et appareils a vapeur.
Pout les annees 1865 k 1874, 1874, 1875, 1876 jusqu'en 1894, extraite des Annates
des Travaux publics; et depuis 1895 jusqu'en 1900 des Annates des mines de Belgique.
Statistigue des industries extractives et mHaUurgigues et des appareils d, vapeur en
Belgique. Volume annuel depuis 1901.
Annales des mines de Belgique, paraissant en 4 livraisons annuelles respective-
ment dans les mois de Janvier, avril, juillet et octobre (Ministere de I'lndustrie et
du Travail. Administration des Mines).
La 1" annee a paru en 1896. ,
Enguete sur la condition des classes ouvrieres et sur le travail des enfants (Minis-
tere de I'lnt^rieur). 1846-1848, 3 volumes.
RSstiltai de I' enguete ouverte par les officiers du corps des mines sur la situation des
ouvriers dans les mines et les usines nUtaUurgigties de la Belgigue, en execution de la
circulaire adressde le 3 novembre 1868 par le Ministre des Travaux publics aux
Ing^nieurs en chef des Mines. 1869, 1 volume.
Salaires et budgets ouvriers, en Belgigue, au mois d' avril 1891. Renseignements
174 MEMORIAL VOLUME
fournis par les Conseils de I'lndustrie et du Travail (MinistSre de I'Agriculture, de
rindustrie et des Travaux publics). 1892, 1 volume.
Bulletin de I'mspection du travail. Publication mensuelle dont les 2 premieres
annees (1894 et 1895) fonuent un recueil special et qui, depuis le 1" Janvier 1896,
a 6t& incorpore dans la Revue du travail.
Rapports annuels de I'inspection du travail, publics par TOffice du Travail. 1"
ann£e, 1895.
Revue du travail, publiee par I'OflSce du Travail. Mensuelle de 1896 k 1906 et
bimensuelle depuis 1906. Edition flamande: Arbeidsblad depuis 1896.
Travail du dimanche, public par I'OflSce du Travail 1896-1898. 5 volumes.
Les Industries d. domicile en Belgique 1899-1909. Vol. X: £tude statistique des
families ouvriferes comprenant des ouvriers k domicile. 1909, 1 volume. (9 vol-
umes de monographies et 1 volume contenant la bibliographie de la matifere.)
Bulletin de I'Office des classes moyennes, plus tard Bulletin de I'Office des mMiers et
n&goces. Publication trimestrieUe. 1" ann6e, 1907.
Enquite sur la piche maritime en Belgique.
I. Litroduction. Recensement de la pSche maritime.
II. Etude teonomique de la p6che maritime.
III. Etude sociale de la pfiche maritime.
Statistique des salairea dans les mines de houiUe (octobre 1896-mai 1900). 1901,
1 volume.
Salaires dans I'industrie gantoise. 1902-1904, 2 volumes:
I. Industrie cotonni^re;
II. Industrie de la filature du lin.
Salairea et durSe du travail dans les industries textiles au mois d'octobre 1901.
1905, 1 volume.
Salaires et durh du travail dans les industries des milaux au mois d'octobre 1903.
1907, 2 volumes.
Statistique des grkes en Belgique. 1896-1900. 1903, 1 volume; 1901-1905.
1907, 1 volume; 1896-1910. 1911, 1 volume.
Mines. Statistique des accidents survenus dans les puits durant la ptriode de 1860 d
1879, 1 volume.
Rapport relatif & I' execution de la loi du 31 mars 1898 sur les unions professionnelUs
pendant les ann£es 1898-1901. Pr&ent^ aux Chambres Legislatives par le Ministre
de rindustrie et du Travail. 1904, 1 volume.
Id. anuses 1902-1904. 1907, 1 volume.
Id. annfes 1905-1907. 1911, 1 volume.
Statistique des distributions d'inergie ilectrique en 1908. 1909, 1 volume.
Statistique des accidents du travail (annte 1906). 2 volumes, 1912.
Transports. Chemeus de per. Etc. Travatjx Publics.
Annales des travaux publics en Belgique. — ^Mtooires, chroniques et comptes
rendus d'ordre technique, administratif et statistique concemant les travaux pub-
lics, du pays et de l'6tranger.
Paraissent tons les deux mois depuis 1843 en fascicules de 200 pages illustrfes,
avec planches hors texte.
Renseignements statistiques recueillis par le D6partement des Travaux publics,
1851-1855. 1857, 1 volume.
Id., 1856 a 1867.
BELGIUM 175
Routes etb&timentsmmla. TravauxhydravMquei. Chemins de fer en construction.
— Compte rendu des operations pendant les ann^es 1880 et 1881.
Chemins vicinaux. — Rapport adress^ au Ministre de I'lnt^rieur sur I'inspection
de chemins vicinaux des provinces de Limbouig, de Hainaut et de Brabant,
op&r^e pendant I'ann^ 1851 par Bug. Bidaut, ing^nieur en chef. Un volume pr£-
sent6 aux Chambres legislatives en stance du 3 f^vrier 1852.
Carte figurative de V importance du roulage sur les routes de I'Etai en Belgique en
1879 (Minist^ie des Travaux publics).
Album du dhdoppement progressif du r&seau des routes de 1830 & 1880. — 7 planches.
— Publi6 en 1880 (Ministere des Travaux publics).
StatisHque du nwuvement des transports sur les voies navigables de la Belgique
pendant le second semestre de 1879 (Ministere des Travaux publics). 1 volume et
1 carte.
Recueil descriptif et statistique des voies natdgables de la Belgique. — 1880, 2 volumes
(Ministere des Travaux publics).
Album du dSveloppement progressif du riseau des voies navigables de 1830 & 1880.
7 planches. Public en 1880 (Ministere des Travaux publics).
Album statistique des recettes et des dipensesfaites par I'Etat pour les voies navigables
de la Belgique de 1830 & 1880 (Ministere des Travaux publics).
Notice descriptive et statistique des installations maritimes de la Belgique. 1880
(Ministere des Travaux publics).
DiagrammiB figuralif du mouvement des transports sur les voies navigables de la
Belgique en 1885 (Ministere des Travaux publics).
Carte figurative du mouvement des transports sur les voies navigables de la Belgique
en 1893 (Miniature des Travaux publics).
Carte statistique de la navigation inUrieure sur les voies navigables de la Belgique
et des pays limitrophes en 1910. (Dresste par I'Ecole Saint-Jacques des Bateliers
if. Namur.)
Chemins de fer de VEtat. — Compte rendu des opiralions. — ^Rapports des 4 aoftt
1835, 1" mars 1837, 26 octobre 1837, 26 novembre 1838, et 12 novembre 1839.
Annuel depuis 1840.
On y a compris successivement le compte rendu des operations des t^lfigraphes
depuis 1850, des postes depuis 1867 (le rapport pour 1867 donne un apergu des
operations depuis 1830), la marine depuis 1873 (I'annee 1873 comprend quelques
developpements retrospectifs), les telephones depuis 1883.
Carte figurative de la circulalion des grosses marchandises sur les lignes de I'Etat,
pendant I'annSe 1879 (Ministere des Travaux publics). 1 feuille.
Dheloppement du mmivement postal en Belgique. — Nombre des lettres privees,
des cartes postales, des joumaux et imprimes expedies atmuellement par la poste
aux lettres. 1884, 1 feuille.
CoiiOim: DU Congo Belge.
Bulletin offidel de I'Etat Indipendant du Congo. 1* annee, 1885; devenu:
Bulletin offidel du Congo beige k partir du 15 novembre 1908.
Renseignements de I'Offi^e colonial. Annexe au Bulletin offidel de I'Etat InMpend-
ant du Congo. 1" annee 1907.
Annexe au Bulletin offidel du Congo Beige k partir du 15 novembre 1908 — devenu:
Renseignements de I'Office colonial {publication spSdale) k partir du I" Janvier 1911.
CANADA
13
HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF STATISTICS IN
CANADA
By Ernest H. Godfrey, F.S.S.
Member of the International Statistical Institute; Editor, Census and Statistics
Office, Ottawa, Canada
7. Historical
Necessarily the earliest statistics of a country relate to
the enumeration of its people. When a nation begins to
count, it exercises that faculty upon its population; and in
Canada statistical records, limited in scope, it is true, exist
from the very foundation of the white settlements in North
America.
The first record of population ia Canada relates to the
foundation of Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal), Nova
Scotia, in 1605, when there were 44 surviving settlers out
of 79 who had wintered on the He Ste. Croix. Three years
later (1608) Quebec was founded by Champlaiu, and 28
settlers wintered there. Similar records exist for dates at
varying intervals up to 1663 when the population of New
France was recorded as 2,500, of whom 800 were in Quebec.
To Canada belongs the credit of taking the first nominal
census of modern times, that is to say, a record for each
individual by name. This census was taken on the de jure
principle during the months of February and March, 1666,
for the year 1665, a date prior to any modern census, whether
European or American. The returns occupy 154 pages of
manuscript and are deposited in the Archives of Paris; but
a transcript is preserved in the Archives at Ottawa. The
population, according to this census, numbered 3,215, ex-
clusive of the Royal troops, consisting of from 1,000 to 1,200
men. The data collected embraced families, population,
sexes, conjugal condition, ages of the people and professions
and trades; so that the claim may fairly be made that this
180 MEMORIAL VOLUME
census was the precursor of the present elaborate enumera-
tions of the people and of their resources, which take place
at regular intervals in every civilized country.
A similar census was taken two years later (1667), when
the data collected were extended to include areas under
cultivation and the numbers of cattle and sheep. A census
was taken of Acadia (Nova Scotia) in 1671; but the total
population then enumerated was only 441, while the land
under cultivation was not more than 429 acres. Further
censuses, both of New France and of other North American
colonies, were taken at frequent but irregular intervals, and
under conditions dependent upon political vicissitudes, until
1851, when was taken the first of a series of decennial cen-
suses maintained regularly ever since.
For early records of the statistics of Canada reference may
be made to the Report on the Census of 1871, the first to
be taken after the Confederation of Canada in 1867. The
census was taken under the direction of the late Dr. J. C.
Tache, Deputy Minister of Agriculture; and Vol. IV of the
report contains, besides a valuable historical introduction,
the summaries of censuses taken at different periods in and
for the territories then constituting the British North
American Provinces.
The first legislative attempt to bring under oflficial control
the statistics of the country was made in 1847 by the creation
of a Board of Registration and Statistics for the province of
Ca,nada, which then embraced what are now known as the
provinces of Quebec and Ontario. This board was originally
composed of the Receiver General, the Provincial Secretary
and the Inspector General; but in 1857 the Minister of
Agriculture was substituted for the Inspector General, was
made chairman of the board and was entrusted with execu-
tive duties under the statutes by the board's direction.
This explains the origin of the system under which until
quite recently the census and the statistics of Canada were
attached to the Ministry of Agriculture.
In 1865 the portfolio of agriculture for the province of
CANADA 181
Quebec was held by the late Hon. T. D'Arcy McGee, who,
with the able assistance of Dr. Tach6, made earnest and
successful eflForts to introduce efficiency into the working of
a department which had become sadly disorganized. The
reorganization of the statistical work of the department
was energetically undertaken, and the subject is referred to
by the minister in his Annual Report for 1861. He there
states that, by law, all ministers of religion in Upper Canada
were required to deposit with the Clerks of the Peace dupli-
cates of their registers of baptisms, marriages and burials
and that the Clerks of the Peace were required to transmit
them to the Provincial Secretary. He complains, however,
that this law has practically remained a dead letter, the
returns sent being of such a character as to be utterly useless
for the purpose intended.
To the minister's report is appended a strongly-worded
Memorial to the Board of Registration and Statistics,
written by the secretary, Dr. Tache, and dated January 17,
1865.* In this memorial. Dr. Tache states that, according
to the law originally enacted in 1847 (10 and 11 Vict., c. 14),
the duties imposed upon the Board were "to collect sta-
tistics and adopt measures for disseminating or publishing
the same " ; an annual report of the statistics of the province
was to be laid before the Legislature and a general census
was to be executed every ten years. He complains that
owing to various causes the purpose of the law had been
entirely frustrated, and that there had been no statistics
worthy of the name ever collected, and none at all published
except such as were contained in the reports of the two
Censuses of 1851 and 1860. His strictures with regard to
the reports of those two censuses are very severe. He
writes :
After seventeen years of the existence of the Board of Statistics; after having
kept up for that length of time a certain staff of officers; after having expended
(besides the regular permanent departmental cost of maintenance) a round aggre-
*Ileport for the year 1865 of the Minister of Agricultiure of the Province of Canada,
pp. 16-18, 24-29, Ottawa, 1866.
182 MEMORIAL VOLUME
gate sum of a little more than $260,000 for the taking of two censuses, it is hard to
come and say that our statistics have to be created; but it is the truth, however
unpalatable. What is today called our statistics — I mean the Census Reports of
1851 and 1860 — are fallacious statements, and not to be relied upon in any essential
point. And really it would be more than wonderful if they were not so, knowing
the circumstances under which they were taken and the system which presided
over the whole proceeding.
Of these two censuses he gives instances of what he des-
cribes as "absurdities of the most ridiculous character."
Thus figures are given which express absolute impossibilities,
such as the reports of deaths as compared with the number
of births on one side and the number of the whole population
on the other. In 1851 the number of living children under
one year of age is stated to be by many thousands greater
than the total number of births of the whole of the then
last twelve months. In 1860 all the births are made a part
of the living population, as if there had been no still-born
or no deaths accruing from that very number of births.
Inconsistencies equally absurd are referred to in connection
with the agricultural and industrial censuses; and finally it
is stated that by addition the columns do not always agree :
they sometimes agree in totals whilst they quite disagree
in the details forming the elements of the calculation. Dr.
Tach6 said he had learned, by consulting the traditions of
the oflBce, that such a wonderful result was obtained by
a high-handling of figures, called at the time "to make
them correspond."
The report concludes with the summary of a project for
"creating real Canadian statistics," divided into nine parts,
comprising (1) a preliminary numerical study of the country
and its aboriginal population to the time of Champlain; (2)
the statistics of the seventeenth century; (3) statistics of the
eighteenth century to the capitulation in 1760; (4) statistics
of the eighteenth century from 1760 to the division of Upper
and Lower Canada in 1791 ; (5) statistics of the period of the
separation of the Canadas, included between the years 1791
and 1841; (6) statistics of the period comprised between
the time of the Union (1841) and the taking of the first
CANADA 183
general census in 1851; (7) the Census of 1851 revised,
corrected and annotated with miscellaneous statistics to
the year 1860; (8) the Census of 1860 revised, corrected and
annotated with miscellaneous statistics to the year 1870;
and (9) report of the Census of 1870 ending the first series
of Canadian statistics.
"Such a mass," writes Dr. Tach6, "of well-prepared in-
formation on the territorial, vital, religious, educational,
administrative, military, judicial, agricultural, commercial,
industrial and financial statistics of our country would
constitute a monument at which the enlightened part of
the population would certainly look with complaisance and
other countries with a great deal of interest."
Two years after the date of this report the Confederation
of Canada was accomplished under the British North Amer-
ica Act, 1867, passed by the Imperial Parliament; and the
seat of the new federal government was established at
Ottawa. Under the terms of the Act the exclusive legislative
authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to certain
subjects enumerated, including the "Census and Statistics."
The Act therefore, whilst not prohibiting statistical activity
on the part of the provinces in respect to provincial matters,
distinctly includes the general subject of statistics as a mat-
ter of federal and national importance.
One of the first measures passed by the new federal Parlia-
ment was an Act for the organization of the Department of
Agriculture (31 Vict., c. 33), assented to May 22, 1868,
which Act, while it repealed the similar Act of the province
of Canada previously in force, virtually re-enacted its main
provisions; and "the census, statistics and the registration
of statistics " was the sixth of nine subjects placed under the
control and direction of the new federal Department of
Agriculture. There was not, however, in this Act any fur-
ther statement showing the nature of the statistics con-
templated.
On May 12, 1870, the Dominion Parliament passed a
special Act (33 Vict., c. 21) for the taking of the first census
184 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of the new Dominion in 1871. This census was duly taken
under the direction of Dr. Tache, and the results were
published in a report of five volumes already referred to.
For the Census of 1881 an important new departure was
made in that the Act of 1879 (42 Vict., c. 21), under which
it was taken, provided for a permanent decennial census
and for the regular collection and publication of statistics.
The Act laid it down that a census should be taken at the
beginning of the year 1881 and "at the beginning of every
tenth year thereafter." Section 28 of the Act, under the
heading of "Statistics," provided that the Minister of Agri-
culture should from time to time make rules and regulations
"for the purpose of collecting, abstracting, tabulating and
publishing vital, agricultural, commercial, criminal and other
statistics."
The second census (1881), the third census (1891), and
the fourth census (1901) were taken under the authority
of this Act. The Census of 1881, like that of 1871, was
taken by Dr. Tach6, who died in 1894. The Census of 1891
was taken under the direction of the late Dr. George Johnson,
Dominion Statistician, who had been Census Commissioner
for Nova Scotia in 1881. The fourth census (1901) and the
fifth census (1911) were taken under the direction of the late
Dr. Archibald Blue, in 1901 as Special Census Commissioner
and in 1911 as Chief Officer of the Census and Statistics
Office.
From 1863 to 1873 miscellaneous statistics were pub-
lished by the Department of Finance of the Province of
Canada (1863-1867), and of the Dominion of Canada
(1867-1873). They included chiefly municipal, banking,
insurance and building society statistics. From 1883 to
1890 annual mortuary statistics of selected cities and towns
in Canada were collected and published by Order in Coun-
cil of December 26, 1882, under the authority of the Census
and Statistics Act, 1879.
CANADA 185
77. Present Statistical Organization
In 1905 a further step of progress was taken by the or-
ganization of a permanent Census and Statistics Office as
a branch of the Department of Agricultiu'e. Under the
Census and Statistics Act 1905 (4-5 Edw. VII, c. 5) the
oflBce was charged with the following duties: (1) the taking
of a decennial census commencing with 1911, such census,
as before, to include the enumeration of the people for the
primary purpose of the legal parliamentary representation
and a complete account of the natural products and economic
resources of the Dominion; (2) the taking in the mid-year of
each decade, commencing with 1906, of a census of pop-
ulation and agriculture only, for the three Northwest prov-
inces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the two last
named provinces having been created by Acts of the same
year (1905); (3) the prosecuting of such special intercensal
statistical inquiries as might be ordered from time to time
by the minister responsible to Parliament for the Census and
Statistics Office. The exact wording of the Act in this
connection is that " subject to the approval of the Governor
in Council and under the direction of the minister, the
office shall collect, abstract and tabulate agricultural, com-
mercial, criminal, educational, manufacturing, vital and
other statistics and information from time to time in the
intercensal years of each decade in such ways and manners
as are found most practicable."
With a chief officer, a secretary, three other principal
officers, a permanent clerical staff of about 25 and temporary
clerks of both sexes to the number at maximum pressure
of 170, the office has taken the Northwest census of pop-
ulation and agriculture (1906), a census of manufactures
(1906), a census of dairying (1907), an agricultural census
of eastern Canada (1907), and the decennial Census of 1911,
and has published, or, in the case of the Census of 1911, is
still publishing the results in the form of bulletins, interim
and final reports.
186 MEMORIAL VOLUME
In 1908 a crop-reporting service was instituted by the
appointment of about 3,000 voluntary agricultural corre-
spondents throughout the Dominion. With the aid of these
correspondents, who fill up and return schedules of inquiries
issued to them, the office issues a monthly report on the
condition of agricultural crops and furnishes the information
required by the International Agricultural Institute to which
Canada is an adhering country. It also issues annual
estimates of the areas sown to the principal field crops, of
the yields and values of these crops and of the numbers of
farm live stock. The office is well equipped with the latest
types of calculating machines, most of the adding machines
being operated by electricity. The records collected by the
census schedules are transferred to cards by the perforated
card system and are classified and compiled by specially
designed electrically-driven sorting and tabulating machines.
On April 1, 1912, the Census and Statistics Office was
transferred from the Department of Agriculture to the
Department of Trade and Commerce; but no other change
was then or has since been made in its constitution and
organization.
It will thus be observed that under the legislation at
present in force provision is made for a decennial census
of the population and natural resoiu*ces of the whole Domin-
ion and for a quinquennial census of population and agricul-
ture for the three Northwest provinces of Manitoba,
Saskatchewan and Alberta. In the first year of each decade
the Northwest quinquennial census is, however, merged in
the decennial census of the Dominion. The first Northwest
quinquennial census having been taken in 1906, and the
general Census of 1911 being counted as the second, the
third will fall due to be taken in 1916. In connection with
the census it should be noted that the principle of a quinquen-
nial enumeration of the people was not applied in Canada
for the first time in 1906. Under an Act of 1885 (48-49
Vict., c. 3) a complete census of the province of Manitoba
was taken in 1886, midway between the years of the general
CANADA 187
Censuses of 1881 and 1891, and was the subject of an elabo-
rate report, whilst in 1896 a census of population only was
taken of the same province, the results being embodied in
the form of a return to the House of Commons (No. 25, 1896).
As the intercensal inquiries contemplated by the Act of
1905 were the same, with but slight alterations, as those
provided for by the Act of 1879, we may stop to inquire
how far the authority conferred by the two Acts of 1879
and 1905 have been utilized for the "collection, abstraction
and tabulation of agricultural, commercial, criminal, educa-
tional, manufacturing, vital and other statistics." Of these
subjects, taking them in reverse order, the registration of
births, marriages and deaths and education are, under the
British North America Act, matters entirely within the
jurisdiction of the provinces; so that the Dominion govern-
ment, in respect of these subjects, can only utilize such
statistics as may be published by the provincial govern-
ments, except in regard to inquiries made in connection
with the census, or by means of special intercensal inquiries.
As a matter of fact, the Dominion government has not
attempted the collection of independent statistics on these
two subjects, except by means of the decennial censuses, and
the results thus obtained have not been particularly success-
ful. Indeed, statistics of births and deaths collected at the
recent Census of 1911 have so far not been published, be-
cause of their evidently untrustworthy character. But for
many years ending with 1904 both vital and education
statistics, compiled from the records of the provincial gov-
ernments, were annually published in the Statistical Year
Book of Canada, an oflBcial publication which we shall have
occasion presently to describe. The education statistics,
thus published, were continuous and fairly complete; but
the vital statistics were only partial and fragmentary for
reasons hereinafter given.
One of the first special inquiries set on foot by the new
Census and Statistics OflSce was a postal census of manu-
factures which was taken in 1906. This, through the cordial
188 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and intelligent cooperation of the manufacturers, was com-
pletely successful, and the results, published in 1907 in the
form of a bulletin with an introduction, consist of material
valuable. for comparison with the decennial Censuses of 1901
and 1911, and for the institution of a quinquennial compari-
son from the beginning of the century.
Criminal statistics have been collected annually in Canada
since 1880 under statutory authority originally conferred by
Act of the Dominion Parliament in 1876 (39 Vict., c. 13).
The results have been published upon a comparable basis in
an annual report from 1880 to the present date. They pre-
sent material of which considerable use might be but of which
little use has been made from a sociological point of view.
Of commercial statistics, the import and export returns
are complete and exhaustive, following the exigencies of
tariff legislation; they have been published annually since
Confederation by the Customs Department, and since 1893
have been worked up into special tables from a more purely
commercial standpoint by the Department of Trade and
Commerce; they are now published in the form of monthly
and annual reports.
Reference has already been made to the issue since 1908
of annual estimates of the areas and yields of the principal
field crops, and of the numbers of farm live stock. These
can scarcely be regarded as truly statistical data, except in
so far as they rest upon the results of the decennial or quin-
quennial censuses; but they are the nearest approach to
national annual agricultural statistics for the whole of the
Dominion which it has as yet been possible to secure.
In addition to such statistics as are specially collected by
the Census and Statistics Office there is a great variety of
statistics, mostly annual and continuous, which are com-
piled and published by the departments of the Dominion
government. It is not possible here to enumerate them
exhaustively, but the following schedule gives the names of
some of the principal departments and the subjects upon
which each of them issues statistics that are of public
interest :
CANADA
189
Department.
Nature of Statistics.
Customs .
Trade and Commerce.
Department of the Interior.
Indian Affairs
Naval Service
Marine
Department of Mines
Railways and Canals .
Labor
Finance
Canada's external trade, published under the title
of "Trade and Navigation Returns" in the form
of monthly statements and of an annual report.
Canadian trade in the form of an annual report
issued in seven parts. Three parts relate to
Canadian trade with other countries. The
statistics are based upon the trade and navigation
returns furnished in advance by the Department
of Customs; but they are analysed and classified
differently to suit commercial requirements.
The other four parts include miscellaneous infor-
mation, grain statistics, the subsidized steamship
services and the trade of foreign countries.
A Monthly Report and a Weekly Bulletin are
also published containing much statistical infor-
mation relating to trade.
Monthly and annual statistics of immigration by
the Immigration Branch of the Department.
Annual statistics of forestry production, includ-
ing lumber, pulpwood, cross-ties, cooperage and
telegraph poles, etc., issued by the Forestry
Branch of the Department.
Agricultural, industrial and vital statistics relating
to the Indians of Canada.
Fisheries; radiotelegraphy, etc.
Shipping; meteorology.
Mineral production.
Statistics of railways, express companies, canals,
telegraphs and telephones.
Strikes and lockouts, industrial accidents, wages
and cost of living. Publication: "The Labor
Gazette" (Monthly).
Public accoimts, including revenue, expenditure,
debt, etc.; insurance; friendly societies; loan and
trust companies, etc.
The statistics published by each of these departments
appear mbstly in the form of annual reports. Reference
may be made to the Canada Year Book of 1914 for fairly
complete lists of the publications of the various departments
of both the Dominion and provincial governments.
In addition to the official statistics published by the
190
MEMORIAL VOLUME
Domiiuon government, whether by the special agency of the
Census and Statistics Office or by the respective government
departments, statistics of different kinds are also published
by the governments of the nine provinces. These differ
according to the character of the public work which each
provincial government undertakes; but speaking generally
Canadian official statistics fall into three different categories,
viz.: (1) those entirely collected by the Dominion govern-
ment; (2) those on subjects with which both the Dominion
and provincial governments are concerned; and (3) those
entirely collected and published by the provincial govern-
ments. The following statement shows the statistics of
Canada which fall into one or other of these three categories :
Dominion.
Dominion and
Provincial.
Provincial Only.
Enumeration of the people
Agriculture
Vital statistics •
(Census)
Immigration
Fisheries
Education
Meteorology
Minerals
Municipal statistics
Forestry
Manufactures
Hospitals and charities
Trade (exports and imports)
Insurance
Transportation
Friendly societies
Communications
Labor
Banking
Loan and trust com-
panies
Currency
Joint stock companies
Inland revenue
Justice
Defence
In the first class, viz., statistics relating to subjects under
the exclusive control of the Dominion government, there are
no very great obstacles in the way of effecting such improve-
ments as may be desirable; but in the other two the improve-
ments desirable are both more numerous and more impor-
tant, whilst also the difficulties of effecting them are greater.
A few words will suffice to describe the general statistical
situation as it at present exists in each of the nine provinces.
Tn none of the provinces has there hitherto been any special
CANADA 191
statistical oflfice or bureau for the sole purpose of compiling,
coordinating and publishing all classes of the statistics of the
province. As in the case of the Dominion government the
plan followed has been for each department to publish such
statistics as it considers desirable — usually in the form of
annual reports to the provincial legislature. The statistics
of education, which is purely a provincial matter, are those
for which the most consistent and generally comparable data
exist for all the provinces. For other classes of statistics
there are practically no data which can properly be com-
pared as between the respective provinces or of which the
assembling by provinces can aflford satisfactory data of a
national character.
Whilst there has hitherto been no general statistical oflSce
for Ontario any more than there has been one in any other
of the provinces, it is in Ontario that statistics in diflferent
branches have been longest published and most completely
developed. The vital statistics of the province, elaborate
and detailed in character, have been published in the annual
reports of the Registrar General since 1871, and since 1882
the Bureau of Industries, which was then organized by the
late Dr. Archibald Blue, has published an annual report
containing (1) agricultural statistics; (2) statistics of chattel
mortgages and (3) municipal statistics. In other directions,
such as education, public charities and mines, the provincial
statistics of Ontario are fairly complete and continuous.
Statistical organization in the other provinces has not yet
arrived at any complete stage of development. In fact, the
collection of most classes of statistics is not undertaken in
any systematic manner for the guidance of the government,
but is rather incidental to or a corollary of other descriptions
of departmental work.
Nevertheless, besides Ontario, already mentioned, vital
statistics are annually published by the majority of the
remaining eight provinces. In Prince Edward Island the
system was begun in 1906; yet in 1912 no statistics of births,
marriages and deaths were collected and published. In
192 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Nova Scotia the collection of annual vital statistics began
only five years ago (1909). In New Brunswick no statistics
of the kind are published. In Quebec, according to the
report for 1893 of the Recorder of Vital Statistics, such
statistics were inaugurated in the province on July 1, 1893,
by Act of the Legislature (56 Vict., c. 29). In Manitoba
annual vital statistics exist from 1882 and in Saskatchewan
and Alberta from the date of the creation of these two prov-
inces in 1905. In British Columbia annual vital statistics
date from the year 1872. With regard to vital statistics in
all the provinces the lack of anything like coordination in
respect of methods, scope or period covered prevents them
from being provincially intercomparable, and the entire
defect of New Brunswick is of itself sufficient to prevent the
issue of any annual national figures for the whole of the
Dominion.
Again, most if not all of the provinces collect and publish
annual statistics of agricultural production; but the methods
of collection are dissimilar, and the results diflfer materially
in many cases from the estimates of the Dominion govern-
ment for the same province. Of the three Maritime prov-
inces New Brunswick has published annual statistics of the
area and yield of wheat since 1897, and of hay, oats, buck-
wheat and potatoes since 1898; but in Prince Edward Island
and Nova Scotia little has been done in this direction.
Fairly complete agricultural statistics have been published
annually by the governments of the three Northwest prov-
inces : Manitoba since 1883 (excepting 1888) ; Saskatchewan
since 1898 and Alberta since 1899. In 1911 the government
of British Columbia published what was intended to be the
first of an annual series of agricultural statistics; but the
figures collected proved untrustworthy. Since then strong
efforts have been put forth to obtain more accurate data by
personal visits to farmers; and the results applicable to the
year 1913 have been published.
Up to quite recently the large French-speaking province
of Quebec has had no organized statistics worthy of the
CANADA 193
name, and the collection of statistics of agricultural pro-
duction has not even been attempted. But a beginning has
now been made on very hopeful lines by the organization of
a provincial Bureau of Statistics at Quebec. An Act of the
Provincial Legislature of Quebec authorizing the establish-
ment of such a Bureau was assented to on December 21,
1912, and put into force on November 11, 1913. The Act
provides that the Chief of the Bureau, under the direction
of the Provincial Secretary, shall collect, condense and tabu-
late useful statistics and information respecting the province
and especially respecting education, industry, trade, agri-
culture, population, colonization, natural products of the
soil and generally everything relating to the province of
public interest. Officers and public employees under the
control of the provincial government or under the control
of municipalities, school commissions, societies, associations,
etc., organized under the provincial laws or receiving pro-
vincial subventions, are required to reply promptly to official
communications from the Bureau of Statistics and to collect
and classify in an exact manner the facts and statistics
demanded, refusal to do so being punishable by a fine not
exceeding $50. A clause in the Act provides that the Pro-
vincial Secretary, with the consent of the Lieutenant Gov-
ernor in Council, may make the necessary arrangements for
the establishment of a system for the exchange of informa-
tion and statistics between the Dominion government or
any of its departments and the Bureau.
The preliminary organization of the work of the new
Bureau was entrusted to M. Henri Bunle, statistician in the
General Statistical Service of France, who entered upon this
task in September, 1913. Having completed his mission
M. Bunle returned to Paris, and on July 3, 1914, a new Chief
of the Bureau was appointed in the person of M. G. E,
Marquis, late Inspector of Schools at Bonaventure-Matane.
The new office published in 1914 a Statistical Year Book
for the province in both the French and English languages.
Reference has already been made to the Canada Year
14
194 MEMORIAL VOLTJME
Book. This is an oflBcial statistical publication, the object
of which is to present in a conveniently accessible and sum-
mary form the chief comparative statistics of the Dominion,
which otherwise could only be obtained by consulting in-
numerable blue books of different departments. The want
of such a publication was felt immediately upon the federa-
tion of the Dominion in 1867, and from that year until 1879
was published annually, to quote its title, a "Year Book
and Almanac of British North America, being an Annual
Register of pohtical, vital and trade statistics, customs
tariffs, excise and stamp duties, and public events of interest
in Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia,
Prince Edward Island, Newfoimdland and the West Indies."
Subsequently this title was altered to "The Year Book and
Almanac of Canada, being an Annual Statistical Abstract
of the Dominion and a Register of Legislation and of public
men in British North America." The editor was Mr,
Arthur Harvey, F.S.S., of the Finance Department, Ottawa;
but the work was in no sense a government publication.
Seven years after the lapse of this work, viz., in 1886, the
Department of Agriculture of the Dominion government
began the publication of the Statistical Year Book of Canada,
which consisted of two parts, a "Record" and a "Statistical
Abstract," embracing all the principal official statistics of
Canada, whether published by the Dominion or the provin-
cial governments. The work was continued annually upon
the same lines until 1904 when Dr. George Johnson, who
edited it as Dominion Statistician, was superannuated. In
1905 the Year Book was remodelled by the late Dr. Archi-
bald Blue, Chief Officer of the Census and Statistics Office,
with the title "The Canada Year Book, Second Series";
and its contents were restricted to abstracts of the statistics
of the Dominion government, preceded by notes on the
"Events of the Year." • In 1912 the present writer succeeded
to the editorship, and with the approval of the Minister of
Trade and Commerce further changes have been effected to
meet present-day requirements. These are described in the
CANADA 195
preface for each edition of 1912, 1913 and 1914; here it will
suflBce to mention that the general scope of the work has
been materially enlarged.
III. Future Development of Statistical Organization
That there are at present grave defects in the national
statistical organization of the Dominion is admitted by all
who have had occasion to consult the statistics that exist or
to call for statistics that are furnished by other countries
but which are conspicuously lacking in Canada. Some of
them have already been indicated. The necessity for im-
provement has not indeed escaped the attention of the Do-
minion government. One of the earliest acts of the present
Minister of Trade and Commerce (Sir George Foster),
after taking over the control of a department under whose
administration the Census and Statistics Office comes, was
to appoint on May 12, 1912, a Departmental Commission
to inquire into and report upon the whole statistical situa-
tion of the Dominion. In the reference to this commission
the minister pointed out certain of the defects apparent,
including the lack of a comprehensive system for the collec-
tion and publication of statistics of production and distribu-
tion, the duplication of effort and diversity of results that
were apparent in certain classes of statistics and the dupli-
cation and the want of cooperation between the Dominion
and provincial statistical authorities.
On November 30, 1912, the commission presented their
report wherein the present statistical situation was described
in considerable detail, and a variety of recommendations
were made with the object of remedying defects and of
placing the whole statistical organization of the Dominion
upon a sound and enduring basis. Amongst the principal
recommendations of the commission were that a central
statistical office should be organized for the coordination,
unification, extension and general improvement of statistics;
that in connection with this office there should be a Domin-
ion Interdepartmental Statistical Committee whose duties
196 MEMORIAL VOLUME
should be deliberative and advisory rather than executive,
and who should make recommendations to secure (a) the
prevention of duplication and conflicting results; (b) the
better adaptation of statistical material obtained in one
branch to the. needs of another; (c) the establishment of
uniformity of definitions and methods; (d) expansion and
development along proper lines; and (e) the supervision of
statistical publications and especially of the scope and
arrangement of the Canada Year Book. Other recommen-
dations included the creation of a Statistical Conference
between representatives of the Dominion and of the nine
provincial governments, and with a view especially to the
coordination of statistics of births, marriages and deaths,
public health, education, agriculture, local and municipal
government, industrial accidents, finance, hospitals, chari-
ties, etc. The report further recommended the institution
of a quinquennial census limited to the enumeration of popu-
lation and property and of an annual census of production,
including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining and manu-
factures.
So far little has been done to give effect to the recommen-
dations of the commission; but there is evidence of willing-
ness on the part of the provincial governments to cooperate
with the Dominion government in efforts to secure trust-
worthy statistics of a national character, a willingness which
has not always hitherto been manifested. In one direction
some progress has been made, and further progress is depend-
ent upon action of the Dominion government. On March
26, 1914, a conference on agricultural statistics was held
between representatives of the Dominion and provincial
governments, when a resolution was unanimously passed
that a census of the areas and yields of the principal field
crops and of the numbers of live stock should be taken
annually and that a more complete and accurate census
should be carried out every fifth year. It was also generally
agreed that the reform desired would be best secured by a
well-considered scheme of cooperation between the Dominion
CANADA 197
and provincial governments and that the Dominion govern-
ment, after consultation with each of the provincial govern-
ments, should draft a scheme as a basis for discussion at a
further conference to be subsequently convened.
Whilst statistical development in many directions is desir-
able, reform in two classes of statistics is urgently called for,
viz., vital statistics and statistics of agricultural production.
The initiative in bringing about reform lies naturally with
the Dominion government. A progressive country like
Canada cannot afford to lag behind other countries in
statistical organization. The demand for statistical informa-
tion, prepared upon scientific and up-to-date lines, is con-
stantly growing, not only for the purpose of satisfying the
needs of the home public but also for the purpose of providing
data for comparison with other countries. The establish-
ment in 1909 of the International Agricultural Institute to
which 50 countries of the world, including Canada, adhere,
has already done much to stimulate the collection of national
agricultural statistics upon comparable bases. Similar
action has been contemplated in connection with commer-
cial statistics by the establishment at Brussels of an Inter-
national Institute of Commercial Statistics; and for general
demographic statistics much is hoped for from the establish-
ment at The Hague of a Permanent Bureau of the Inter-
national Statistical Institute, to which, in 1913 at the
fourteenth session, held at Vienna, Canada for the first time
sent an oflScial delegate. Furthermore, if a proposal should
materialize for the establishment of a British Imperial
Statistical Bureau, as suggested in evidence before the
Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the natural
resources of the British Empire, such a bureau could not
fail to exercise a salutary influence in inducing all the Over-
seas Dominions, including Canada, to endeavor to level up
to the requirements of the central authority. Unhappily, a
severe set-back to institutions of this kind is being experi-
enced by the present disastrous European war, and it can.
198 MEMORIAL VOLUME
only be after the restoration of peace that eflPorts at inter-
national statistical cooperation can be renewed.
Looking to the future, it is desirable that better facilities
should be afforded for the trainiog of statisticians. There
are at present very few statisticians in Canada who devote
themselves to the study of statistics from the purely scien-
tific or professional standpoint, and none of the Universities
teach statistics as a special or separate branch of science.
There is, however, at Montreal in the newly-established
"Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales" a Chair of Sta-
tistics, and the teaching of statistics is there undertaken
with a practical, scientific and comprehensive curriculum.
In effect, however, the school is a purely French institution.
In Ontario a High School of Commerce and Finance was
organized in 1911 at Toronto, where the " Elements of
Theoretical and Practical Statistics " are taught during the
second year in the Department of Economics. At Toronto
University "Statistics" is one of the subjects in the second
year of the course in Commerce and Finance.
Universal statistical solidarity is a great ideal. It implies
that, starting from judiciously defined imits of area, prov-
inces or states forming parts of nations or confederacies shall
adopt similar methods to arrive at comparable results as
between themselves; that where such nations or confed-
eracies form parts of an empire there shall likewise be a fair
possibility of interimperial statistical comparability; and
finally that divergence of statistical methods between
countries mutually foreign shall gradually be so far dimin-
ished that the comparability of international statistics may
be rendered increasingly practicable. Dbubtless we are a
long way from complete reahzation of the ideal; but it is
much to be moving steadily if slowly towards the goal
desired.
DENMARK
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN DENMARK*
By Adolf Jensen
Chief of the Statistical Department of Denmark
In the nineteenth century, the official statistics of Den-
mark were at first in charge of an office, later under the care
of a commission, thereupon again transferred to an office,
known as "The Statistical Bureau," the "State Statistical
Bureau," and from 1913 as "The Statistical Department."
But prior to the establishment in 1797 of the Danish-
Norwegian Tabulating Office, enumerations of the popula-
tion had taken place in 1769 and in 1787. The results of
these first two population enumerations must, however, be
regarded as somewhat unreliable. The enumeration of
1769 did not include enlisted military persons, and one of
its chief objects was to discover the presence and number
of tax-payers, a task which necessarily must impair the
trustworthiness of an enumeration and create a desire to
escape being counted which perhaps in our day has not
completely been eradicated. The government had en-
trusted the working out of these two enumerations to private
persons; but a steadily increasing demand for statistical
information, in which the question of taxes and tax-payers
continuously came strongly to the fore, and the desire that
such data should appear regularly and at brief intervals
led to the establishment of the Tabulating Office in 1797.
Overweighting of the office and personal conditions caused
this institution, of which much had been expected, to
play but an insignificant r61e. The revision and analyses
of the public accounts seem in part to have put dispro-
portionately large demands upon the office force which
*The sources of the following survey are, so far as the historical account is con-
cerned, A. Holch: History of the Danish Statistics, 1800-18S0, and History of the
Statistical Bureau, later published by the State Statistical Bureau.
202 MEMORIAL VOLUME
consisted of a few persons; in part, the fact that the office
could accomplish nothing caused a lack of respect which
again created friction in the work of obtaining data. The
office was abolished in 1819. Its principal task had been
to work out the enumeration of 1801; but this work the
office had not succeeded in bringiug to a conclusion.
In consequence of these discouraging results, and as
the need of organizing the official statistics naturally con-
tinued to manifest itself strongly, the government in 1834
undertook the creation of a commission, "The Tabulating
Commission." Its members held high places in the cen-
tral administration, a circumstance which aflforded them
no small degree of independence. The statistical bulletins
pubKshed by the commission were worked out under its
auspices, and its members cooperated in the composition
of the textual parts. Some of these, however, were wholly
or partly the labor of experts outside of the commission;
and this form of assistance, in part of a scientific nature,
was also an indication of the extraordinary and independent
position of the commission, and, together with special ar-
rangement in other respects, came to exert an influence on
the establishment and plan of the Statistical Bureau.
In addition to the preparation of the population enu-
merations of 1834, 1840 and 1845, the Tabulating Com-
mission began, among other things, statistics of the
movement of population through marriages, births and
deaths, of live stock, of the utilization of the agricultural
area, of shipping, of imports and exports, of criminal con-
ditions, of the produfction of whisky, etc.*
The work of the Tabulating Commission was received
with great satisfaction; but as it was a secondary occupa-
tion of the members of the commission, and as the field of
labor gradually expanded, it was unavoidable that a grow-
ing desire for an independent statistical bureau should make
itself felt. The commission was abolished in 1848 and,
after a temporary arrangement and searching considera-
* History of the Statistical Bureau, pp. 147-148.
DENMARK 203
tions, "The Statistical Bureau" was created on January 1,
1850.
In the report of the estabhshment of the bureau it is
stated that the Council of State preferred to entrust the
direction of the bureau to an individual rather than to a
commission which had been proposed in several quarters,
that the chief of the bureau should be directly under the
minister without a departmental director as intermediary;
that the chief should sign documents pertaining to the
bureau, and that matters concerning the bureau should
preferably be directed to it in so far as the respective authori-
ties did not feel especially impelled to address their commu-
nications to the minister in charge, as in case of complaints
against the bureau and the like.
Thus there was created an independent central bureau;
and it remains unchanged in principle to this day.
Following the lines indicated by the Tabulating Commis-
sion, the Statistical Bureau constantly enlarged its field. of
work. It is thus to be mentioned that population enumer-
ations were regularly taken at intervals of five or ten years,
since 1901 quinquennially, while every other enumeration has
been made more extensive. Data in regard to marriages,
births, and deaths have also since that time been published
at intervals of five years; data relating to the "utilization
of the area" (agriculture) were collected for the first time
by the Tabulating Coinmission in 18S8, again in 1861, and
thereupon first at quinquennial, later at decennial, and, in
most recent times, once more at quinquennial periods. At
the same periods of time and partly with the same intervals
enumerations of live stock were regularly made. Begin-
ning with 1875, annual accounts were rendered of the amount
and value of the crops. For 1845-49 and since 1860 data
have, furthermore, been gathered in regard to the sale and
prices of farm lands. As already mentioned, the Tabulat-
ing Commission had published tables of imports and ex-
ports. Since 1854 an annual publication on this subject
had appeared; the same applies to shipping (although after
204 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1910 tabulations of the shipping will only appear quinquen-
nially). The bureau likewise continued the criminal sta-
tistics of the Tabulating Commission; but statistics of civil
court work were not begun until 1863. Moreover, the
public accounting and finance system, which had played
such a large r61e at the beginning of the century, was of
course made a constant object of work and publication.
A reorganization and expansion of the bureau in 1895,
together with far-reaching changes in personnel, served to
speed up and make more timely several of the current under-
takings, and again to bring new fields under cultivation.
First of all mention must be made of the Year Book and of
the social statistics.
During the years 1869-74 there appeared annually a
"Summary of Statistical Information," a very practical
and very useful document, the publication of which unfor-
tunately has occurred only at intervals of several years.
After 1895 these summaries were continued in the Statisti-
cal Year Book, the first volume of which appeared in 1896
and with its additions and improvements is now perhaps the
most widely used of the publications of the department.
In the domain of social statistics, an enumeration of trades
and indiistries was imdertaken (1897). In connection here-
with statistics were collected of wages and hours of labor.
Among other things, furthermore, an extensive inquiry was
made into the cost of living of Danish laborers' families,
covering the entire year 1897; and statistics relative to
labor conflicts were begun.
In the years following, the work in all these fields has
been carried forward and accompanied by a steady improve-
ment of statistical technique (such as the substitution of a
card system for the previous lists); and continuous efiForts
were made to bring the results to the knowledge of the pub-
lic as quickly as possible. To this end, among other things,
the monthly statistical communications were begun in
1909.
In 1913 the name "State Statistical Bureau" was changed
DENMARK 205
to "The Statistical Department." At the same time the
oflSce was expanded by adding a third division to be con-
cerned chiefly with social statistics.
Aside from the Statistical Department, which, as shown
above, has the character of a central statistical bureau, there
is no other statistical bureau in the proper sense except the
Statistical Oflfice of the municipality of Copenhagen. The
statistics office of the Traffic Departments are chiefly con-
cerned with bookkeeping and accounting. The Board of
Health maintains a medical-historical office which collates
and publishes the morbidity and mortality statistics for the
kingdom, while the other population statistics are in charge
of the Statistical Department. It may also be noted that
the annual account of the yield of the salt-water flsheries is
published by the Inspector of Fisheries, and that the annual
business statistics for about one half of the dairies of the
country are published by a special committee. These are
fields of Danish statistics lying outside of the province of
the department. (The results, in addition to being pub-
lished by the above-mentioned institutions, are given in a
summary form in the Statistical Year Book of the depart-
ment.)
The foundation of the activities of the department is to
be sought in the law of 1895 governing the State Statistical
Bureau in connection with a law of 1913 and the arguments
pertaining to them. The law of 1895 says:
"The activity of the Bureau shall be to furnish informa-
tion in regard to the conditions of population, social con-
ditions particularly with reference to the wage earners,
financial and industrial life, culture, the administration of
the state and the communes, and the participation of the
population in public life — all so far as such information can
be obtained and presented statistically. The Bureau shall,
furthermore, contribute to international statistics. Finally,
it is a duty of the Bureau to aid the administration by sta-
tistical analyses and information, in preparing opinions, etc."
206 MEMORIAL VOLUME
In conformity with the above field of labor the bureau deals
with the following principal subjects :
1. Statistics of population, including:
(a) Enumerations of population.
(b) Marriages, births, deaths and migrations.
8. Judicial and moral statistics, including:
(a) Civil cases, including attachments.
(b) Criminal court cases.
(c) Cases of public morals (sexual morality, intemperance, etc.).
3. Social statistics, including:
(a) Conditions of living in the different strata of society, including the con-
ditions of livelihood and consumption.
(b) Special objects of consideration are the conditions of the wage earners in
their different relations, the conditions of wealth and income as well
as working men's insurance.
4. Industrial statistics, including:
(a) Agriculture.
(b) Industries.
(c) Fisheries.
(d) Financial transactions, thereunder banks and institutions for savings.
5. Statistics in regard to culture, thereunder education and instruction.
6. Statistics in regard to public relations:
(a) The financial affairs of the state and the communes.
(b) Public elections.
7. International statistics, including:
Participation in the mutual Scandinavian as well as in the general inter-
national statistical work.
In regard to the statistical publications of the bureau,
reference is made to the appended list; but some remarks
are in point concerning the basis and collection of material
in the different branches of statistics.
Although the law of 1895, with the resolutions pertaining
to it, etc., on the whole affords the department the necessary
authority to demand the requisite information of the public
authorities and the citizens of the country, it has been cus-
tomary that, for instance, enumerations of trades and indus-
tries are in conformity with special legislation; just as the
basis of the statistics of commerce is the regulation incor-
porated in the tariff law of 1908 in regard to the duty of
commercial people to furnish data concerning the magnitude
of the imports or exports, etc. While these special legis-
lative acts contained penalty clauses (fines) in case of neglect
DENMARK 207
to furnish this requisite information, no other forcible means
of obtaining it is available; nor is it needed. The existing
penalty clauses have never been brought into use.
As a rule the provincial governors and the communal
councils (city and parish councils) function as intermedi-
aries between the department and the public. Thus it
may be mentioned that, for instance, the population
schedules are forwarded to the municipalities and parishes
through the provincial governors, to be distributed in the
cities by commimal authorities to every house-owner, whose
duty it is to see that the inhabitants of the house fill them
out correctly; while in the country districts distribution is
made by enumeration commissioners, especially appointed
by the parish councils, who have the duty of assisting the
population in properly filling out the schedule. Very much
in the same manner a schedule or card is directed to each
farm, to be filled out with information in regard to the num-
ber of live stock and other questions connected with it, such
as the participation in the agricultural cobperative activi-
ties, etc., or in regard to the use made of the farm area. Data
concerning the number of live stock and the utilization of
the area are, as remarked before, collected every five years.
Aside from this interest which is inherent in the facts rela-
tive to the utihzation of the area (the areas devoted to the .
diflFerent crops), data obtained also serve as a basis for
the annual statistics of crops. The method of procedure
here is, generally speaking, the following: For each of the
parish communities of the country (of which there are about
1,200), when the threshing is done the communal council
states according to its best judgment the yield obtained
(hectoliter per hectare) for the different crops. By multi-
plying the result by the known area covered by the different
crops in the parish, the total of the harvest is ascertained.
The figures from other parishes are added to secure data
for larger districts and the whole country. By using the
same area as basis for five years in succession some inac-
208 MEMORIAL VOLUME
curacy, of course, arises. It is not believed, however, that
this is of essential importance.
Among other larger branches of statistics to be mentioned
in this connection is that relative to marriages, births and
deaths. Here the clergy of the state church and of other
recognized religious organizations act as registrars and fill
out an individual blank for each marriage, birth and death.
These schedules are collected and transmitted to the depart-
ment for tabulation. Individual cards are also used in the
collection of criminal statistics. The method employed is
that the criminal records are not kept in the jurisdiction
within which the prosecution has taken place but in the
jurisdiction of the birth-place of the criminal, and that the
first mentioned jurisdiction transmits to the jurisdiction of
the birth-place of the criminal a "penal card" in regard to
him as soon as a sentence is pronounced in the first instance,
and after the contents of this card are entered on the record
it is sent to the Statistical Department. It is thus possible
to follow up the same person, a very essential point in the
production of rational statistics of recidivism.
Information in regard to suicides and deaths from acci-
dents are obtained from the transcriptions of hearings and
inquests which the jurisdictions are obliged to send to the
department.
Brief mention has been made above of the enumerations
of trades and industries and of the commercial statistics.
So far as the first mentioned branch is concerned the dis-
tribution and collection of the schedules are usually made
through the communal councils. At the last two enumera-
tions (1906 and 1914) there were, in addition to information
in regard to the number of industrial establishments, the
wage earners, and their distribution according to sex, age,
training, etc., collected data in regard to the gross value of
production for the year preceding enumeration, the amount
of wages, hours of labor, etc. In the future, information
about wages will be obtained also through another channel
as the department is to receive the data communicated to
DENMAKK 209
the employers' strike insurance organizations, in regard to
the wages paid by each individual employer week by week.
This information goes into great detail, and as the amount
of strike compensation is awarded in proportion to the wages
paid there is a guarantee that the data will be complete.
Besides, the department has the right to regulate the man-
ner in which the data are collected and exercises another
method of control in regard to the statistics of tariff agree-
ments which have also been begun recently. About the
statistics of commerce, it should be said that the importer
is in duty bound to hand in to the Customs Department,
which controls the correctness thereof, a notification of the
kind of goods imported, their quantity, place of production,
etc. In the same manner exporters must report to the
Customs Department, the Railway Department, and the
Post Office Department, in regard to the goods exported.
In the blanks used the value of the goods is not inquired
into, but information about it is obtained by the depart-
ment through communication with a large number of lead-
ing firms in the different branches.
We have now accounted for some of the principal fields
within which the organization of the Danish statistics
offers points of special interest. Meanwhile, in all cases in
which public documents are concerned, for instance, in
regard to the finances of the state and local communes,
banks and savings institutions, stock companies, the rail-
ways, post office, telegraphs, etc., such accounts and reports
of course form the basis of the statistical surveys prepared
by the department. To what extent these reports provide
such a basis may be gathered from the statement incor-
porated in the Statistical Year Book relative to the sources
of the single tables.
While the subordinate work in the Statistical Department
is carried on by students of pohtical economy and by women
with office experience, the higher positions (10 assistants, 5
experts, 3 bureau chiefs and the departmental chief) are
practically always filled by graduates in economic science.
210 MEMORUL VOLUME
Among the assistants are to be found, however, two gradu-
ates in law (on account of the judicial statistics) and a math-
ematician. The graduates in political economy have com-
pleted a five years' university course (10 semesters) and
taken their final examinations. The examinations cover
the theory and poKcies of the national economy, finance,
the statistics of Denmark, the theory of statistics, sociology,
different branches of law, poHtical history, etc. Such train-
ing must naturally be regarded chiefly of a theoretical nature,
but since those who are appointed assistants as a rule have
worked in the department while attending the university,
this shortcoming is in no small measure compensated for.
The studies in question draw considerable numbers, and it
is always easy for the department to secure the necessary
working force.
In view of the development of the official Danish statis-
tics, and, moreover, from the nature of conditions in a small
country, the centralization of statistical work in a single
institution has imquestionably been the happiest form. It
makes for rational determination in the treatment of the
different kinds of material as well as for uniformity; and it
is of great importance to the working statisticians in modern
society, where all things are inter-related, to come into as
close a contact as possible with the different branches of
statistics in the course of their labors.
A central bureau is also the most fortunate form for the
development of statistics and for undertaking new subjects.
There will thus always be an institution to which new work
can be referred, and its officials by reason of their training
accustomed to dealing with many subjects of different
kinds.
It has also been found in this country that it is quite easy
for the Statistical Department to keep pace with develop-
ments. What self-evidently in great degree has contributed
to this is that the legislative authorities and public opinion
show the department much good-will, manifesting consid-
erable interest in its work, and that, on the whole, no mean
DENMARK 211
degree of statistical sense has been awakened in the pop-
ulation. In order to achieve this, effort has been made to
bring the results of statistical work, before embodying it in
more ponderous tabulations, quickly before the public in
an easily accessible form. The publication, "Statistical
Communications," has provided an excellent medium to
this end. The material it contains is extensively reprinted
by the daily press. Although there are fields in regard to
which both interested parties and the department itself
might wish to furnish more information than now can pos-
sibly be given, it may surely be said, in general, that what
can be done is in a measure being done, in order that the
department may keep pace with developments.
Self-evidently every requirement on the part of inter-
national statistics is being met so far as possible. It has
always been the especial concern of the department to pro-
vide information as fully as possible for the use of Inter-
national Year Books, Summaries, etc. In the same manner
the International Crop Reporting Institute has been given
as much support as feasible; and it is a pleasure to state
that the Danish Government has granted oflScial assistance
to the permanent bureau of the International Statistical
Institute. So far as compatible with the peculiar condi-
tions of each country it is imquestionably true that inter-
national statistics should be considered of the greatest inter-
est and significance. But on the other hand, it must not
be forgotten that there still exist several fields in regard to
which the difference between one country as compared with
another are so great that some of the descriptions used fre-
quently pertain to widely different things. It is precisely
the co-relation of such heterogeneous numbers for which
international statistics must have a care, and it is the more
difficult to guard against them as only a thorough knowledge
of the conditions in the individual countries make it possi-
ble to realize that there is danger. Here as well as in sta-
tistics generally the greatest difficulty consists in framing
the questions to be put.
THE PUBLICATIONS OF THE STATISTICAL
DEPARTMENT OF DENMARK
/. Area and Population
The Area of Denmark, 1906
The Length of Roads
The Condition of Roads
Rural Districts United with Munidpalities
The Number of Rural Communes, 1850
The Popiilation of Denmark in the 19th Century
Population Enmnerations
(a) Denmark from 1801 to 1911, which is the latest enimieration
(b) The Duchies
(c) Copenhagen
(d) Jurisdictions
(e) Faero Islands
(f) Iceland
(g) Greenland
(h) Danish West Indies
(i) Danish East Indies, 1835
Enumeration Communal Populations
Marriage Statistics
The Number of Deaf and Dumb
Marriages, Births and Deaths
(a) Denmark, the first publication for 1801 to 1833, the last publica-
tion for 1906 to 1910
(b) Duchies
The Mortality in Denmark and the Duchies, 1845 to 1854
The Causes of Death in Municipalities (after 1899 published separately
by the Board of Health)
Suicides, the first for 1835 to 1844; the last for 1886 to 1895
Suicides and Accidents, 1896 to 1905
Accidents on Seeland; in agriculture and forestry
//. Agriculture and Forestry
Conditions of Agriculture in Denmark, 1850 to 1910
Farming in Denmark, 1850 to 1905
Conditions of Agriculture, 1853
The Measure of Land, Appraisement, Distribution of Farms, etc., 1835
Live Stock, the Utilization of the Area, etc.
Larger Agricultural Properties and Their Location
Farm Properties According to Size, 1901
Sales and Prices of Farms, the first tor 1845 to 1849, the last for 1905 to
1909
The Utilization of the Area, the last for 1907
DENMARK 218
Statistics of the Utilization of the Area
Censuses of Live Stock, the last for 1909
The Cooperative Unions in Agriculture
The Utilization of Agricultural Machinery
Statistics of Crops, Preliminary and Final Annual Reports
Forestry, 1907
III. Trades and Industry
Manufactures, etc.
Industrial Enumerations, 1897 to 1906
Home Industries in Copenhagen, 1906
IV. Commerce and Navigation
Foreign Commerce, Navigation and Merchant Fleet
Importation and Exportation in Denmark, Annual
Importation and Exportation (Quarterly Statistics)
Foreign Commerce (Quarterly Statistics)
Productions Controlled by the State, the last for 1912
V. Prices
Official Prices of Cereals, 1600-1902
Official Prices of Cereals, the last 1912
Official Prices of Cereals, Averages for the Years 1829 to 1848, 1882 to
1851
VI. Social Statistics
Savings Banks
Sick Associations
Morbidity Statistics, 1908
The Frequency of Tuberculosis in Denmark, 1906
Old Age Relief, the last for 1897 to 1900
Organization for Poor Relief, 1901
Poor Relief, 1901
Widowers and Widows with Children, 1911
The Work of School Children in Gainful Occupations, 1908
Strikes and Lockouts, 1897 to 1899, 1900 to 1904, 1905 to 1910
Wages of Workmen for the State
Wages of Industrial Workers, 1897 to 1905
Wages in Agriculture, 1897, 1905, 1910
Conditions of Labor among the Restaiuant Keepers
Hours of Labor in Industries, 1906
Budgets of Wage-Earning Families, 1897
Household Budgets, 1909
Drunkenness, 1892
VII. Education
The Common Schools in Rural Districts
Public Schools, the last for 1911
High Schools for the Agricultural Classes and Agricultural Schools, the
last for 1911
214 MEMORIAL VOLUME
VIII. Judicial Statistics
Civil Judicial Statistics
Estates of Bankrupt and Decedent Persons
Criminal Judicial Statistics
Civil and Criminal Justice, 1901 to 1905
IX. Public Elections
Registered Voters
Qualified Electors
Elections to the Folketing
Communal Elections
X. Finance and Taxation
Receipts and Expenses of the Monarchy
Receipts and Expenses of the State
Communal Accounts
Persons Liable to Taxation (Law of 1864)
Persons Liable to Taxation (Law of 1862)
Persons Liable to Taxation (Law of 1870)
The New State Taxes, 1904 to 1905
Valuation for the Purpose of Property Tax, 1904
State Income and Property Tax
XI. Income and Wealth According to Taxation
Other Publications
The Stature of Conscripts
Ability of Soldiers to Read and Write
Thermometrical Conditions in Copenhagen
Value of the Buildings of the State
The Statistical Bureau, Laws and Circulars Pertaining to it
The Statistical Bureau, Its Activity, 1896 to 1897
The Statistical Bureau, List of Publications
The Statistical Bureau, The Organization of OfiBcial Statistics, 1886
The Statistical Bureau, Scandinavian Statistical Meeting, 1900
Statistical Information about Iceland, 1907; about Greenland, 1012
Foreign Commerce of the Danish West Indies
R€sum€ of Statistical Information
Statistical Year Book, 1896 to 1913
Precis de Statistique, 1907
Statistical Siunmaries, 1913
Statistical Communications, 1909 to 1013
History of The Statistical Bureau, 1900
History of Danish Statbtics, 1800 to 1850
Commerce between the Scandinavian Countries, 1900 to 1906
FRANCE
THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS OF
STATISTICS IN FRANCE
By Fernand Fatjre
Professor of Law at the University of Paris and Member of the Conseil
Sup^rieuT de Statistique
Wishing to conform to the clear "suggestions" of The
American Statistical Association, we shall limit the study,
which it has done us the honor to ask us to make, to prac-
tical statistics, to a description of the actual work of enum-
eration. We shall eliminate as far as possible whatever
relates to the doctrines or the theories which have as their
aim the organization, methods and data of statistics. We
shall divide our study into three parts: 1, The History of
Statistics in France; 2, The Actual Organization of the
Work; 3, Desirable and Possible Lines of Progress.
Part I. History of Statistics in France
In the domain of history it has long been the habit, espe-
cially in France, to confuse the practice of statistics with
the theory of statistics.*
These are, however, in the past as in the present, two very
different things. It is necessary to study them separately,
in spite of the intimate relations that can be discovered
between them, just as it is important to study separately
the history of economic fact and the history of economic
theory.
What we intend to set forth here is the history of the
practice of statistics.
Usually one traces the beginning of this history to the
plans for investigation conceived by Sully and Colbert and
especially to the celebrated mSmoires drawn up by the
* Moreau de JonnSs, Maurice Block, Emile Levasseur, to cite only the leading
French experts in the subject in the second half of the nineteenth century, have
been guilty of this confusion. See Levasseur, La Population Frannaise, Vol. I,
Histoire sommaire de la Statistique, pp. 47-73.
218 MEMORIAL ' VOLUME
Intendants from 1697 to 1700. It is assumed that before
the last years of the eighteenth century there was no attempt
at official statistics worthy of the name.*
This error is due to a rather superficial view of things. It
is right to say that "the creation of an organization exclu-
sively devoted to gathering numerical inforn^ation in France
does not go back of the last years of the eighteenth cen-
tury." But it is wrong to conclude that to have official sta-
tistics France had to wait for the reorganization, by Necker,
of the bureau of the balance of trade.
However far one goes back into the remote history of our
country, one finds not, indeed, the word "statistics," for
that did not come until later, but the thing for which the
word stands. Enumerations are contemporaneous with
the establishment of a regular administration, and, like it,
they owe their origin, by a tradition a little obscure some-
times but none the less certain, to the powerful organization
which the Romans left on the soil of the Provinces of Gaul.
The enumerations were made as well as might be with the
limited means at the disposal of a rudimentary public service.
They are very imperfect, but they exist, and they correspond
in point of efficiency to the administrative institutions of
the times.
What explains and excuses the error of those who refuse
to see them, is that in the absence of an organization with
the especial duty of making these enumerations they lie
buried and hidden under the mass of work done by the
general government of the state; moreover, the documents
which reveal their existence are extremely rare; their pres-
ence is more easily conjectured than discovered; and in
order to find traces of them it is necessary to apply oneself
to long and difficult researches like those excavations which
are undertaken in certain countries to bring to light the
remains of buried cities.
Nothing serves better than the history of statistics to
* See in this connection: StaMstique GinSrale de la France, Historique el iravaux
de la fin du XVIIKme slide au dihvi du XXhne, 1913, p. 6.
FRANCE 219
reveal to us the narrow bonds which unite this form of the
study of facts with the work of the political and administra-
tive institutions of a country. Indeed, one might say that
in tracing the history of applied statistics we are writing one
of the most interesting chapters in the history of institutions.
On the one hand, indeed, are the departments of public
service which, alone, up to the nineteenth century, have
made enumerations and have made them only to the extent
demanded by the necessities of their work. So, on the other
hand, in our time individuals and private societies can make
enumerations in the very limited domain with which they
are concerned. But only the state is capable of enumerating
regularly the enormous amount of social phenomena numer-
ical knowledge of which is indispensable for the develop-
ment of its departments of service and is in the interest of
the several phenomena themselves. One must go still
further. It is necessary to add that in making a census of
social phenomena which no private initiative would be able
to reach, the state fulfills one of its duties which is just as
essential as guaranteeing order and safety. To the old
formula by which the uncompromising individualists
summed up the attributes of public authority: "The state,
soldier, judge and policeman," we must add a fourth epithet,
statistician. The state ought to be statistician as it ought
to be soldier, judge and policeman, because the function of
' statistics answers a need of the most general order and be-
cause the state alone is in a position to discharge that func-
tion well.
In reviewing the long evolution of statistics in France, we
may distinguish four periods corresponding to four historical
epochs (moments) which are fairly definite and have rather
precise characteristics.
I. From the Eighth to the Thirteenth Century.
II. From the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century.
III. The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
IV. The Nineteenth Century.
For each of these periods, however difficult it may be for
220 MEMORIAL VOLUME
those that are farthest away from us, we shall try to answer,
a little more clearly than has been done hitherto, the three
following questions:
A. By whom and how was the science of statistics founded?
B. What was the object of it?
C. In what sort of documents were the data of statistics
written and preserved?
I. Statistics in France from the Eighth to the Thirteenth
Century
The period of nearly six hundred years which we shall
try to embrace in this paragraph, opens in 752, the first
year of the reign of Pepin the Short, the first of the Carlo-
vingian kings, and extends to the death of Philip the Fair,
in November 1314.
There is nothing in the Middle Ages which recalls, even
remotely, the institution of the Roman censura, so imposing
in its redoubtable authority and so strongly specialized in
its function of census-taking. In that period we find no
trace of a defined organization appointed to make the neces-
sary enumerations. This task was entrusted, without the
slightest inkling of a division of labor, to the officials of the
rudimentary governmental departments of the French mon-
archy at their very beginning. We may assert that they did
the work incompetently and without method and that their
labors had not the remotest relation to the census, solemn,
almost sacred in character, which the Roman censor was
required to make every five years.
The enumerations so made were essentially limited and
fragmentary, and nothing justifies us in believing that they
were periodically renewed.
The essential object of all the official registrations of that
time was land. Land, because in those days it was the prin-
cipal, if not the only, source of power, of wealth, and because
its multiple divisions and subdivisions were the basis of the
feudal system. The possession of land had such vital
interest for those who controlled it that they could not
FRANCE 221
afford not to know about it. And that is why everybody
whose estate was of a certain size submitted it to a minute
inventory which constituted a real census. It was an
imperative need which had to be satisfied at any cost and
which was imposed not only on the king himself and his
domains but also on all the community-holdings of the
private orders which held such a great place in medieval so-
ciety, on churches, abbeys, monasteries. The property of
these communities was sometimes so important that its
registration was imposed by royal authority, or, at any rate,
royal authority thought it ought to take a hand in it. So
it came about that on their accession to power Pepin the
Short in 758 and Charlemagne in 762 ordered the detailed
description of church lands. The Polyptiques, of which we
shall speak presently and which constitute the statistical
documents par excellence of this period, were essentially a
registry of the land.
Demographical Statistics in the Middle Ages
From the earliest times in Rome and during the whole of
the Republic and the Empire the census is, by definition, a
work intended to give the number of the population with its
essential divisions according to age and sex. And that is
what it is in our time, in all civilized countries that we know.
Enumeration of the people (demography) is everywhere, as
in Rome, the main branch of statistics. K we open a copy
of an Annuaire Statistique, one of those volumes in which the
intention is to gather together every year all statistical data
through which the life of a country is set forth, we see that
the first place there is always reserved for the statistics of
population. And that seems to us very natural. Is not
the first need of an organized society to know itself and to
take as the measure of its strength the knowledge of the
number of individuals who compose it?
Why was it otherwise from the eighth to the fourteenth
centuries? It is not difficult to see why.
The general census of the population of a country presup-
222 MEMORIAL VOLUME
poses a public authority powerfully organized and strong
enough to break down the resistances which a work of this
kind inevitably encounters. This authority did not exist
in the period with which we are dealing.
But to this reason, which in itself is enough, can be added
another. As a matter of fact the population was not left
completely out of the census of that period. It was included
in it automatically and incidentally. Without being the
object of it, the enumeration of the people was a result.
Take the case of the rural population: composed in large
part of peasants and of serfs, it was all alike attached to
the soil; it was part and parcel of the land and so naturally
found itself included in the land-census. The Polyptique
de I'AbhS Irminon as well as the Cartulaire de VAlbaye de
Reims and the Description des Serfs de I'Eglise de Marseille,
which date, like the Polyptique, from the first half of the
ninth century, afford us the striking proof of this. Was it a
question of the industrial population which was almost all
grouped in the cities? Without counting it one could esti-
mate it by some one of the measures which the nascent
fiscal system of the monarchy demanded. Thus thanks to
the Ksts of taxes (tailles) levied in Paris in 1292 and in 1300,
we possess a registration, street by street, of all the artisans
subject to the tax. They number, for the manual and
mechanical trades alone, 4,159 in 1292 and 5,844 in 1300.*
This much is certain, and it is not one of the least char-
acteristic traits of French statistics in the Middle Ages,
that population was never the direct and principal object
of a census; they never dreamed of setting to work to enu-
merate the total population of France; the public powers of
that time, whether they were in the vigorous hands of a
Philip Augustus (1180-1223) or of a Philip the Fair (1285-
1314), were content to remain ignorant of the number of the
population subject to their authority, and they preferred
to increase it by ceaseless conquests rather than know it
exactly by careful census.
* See the details on this subject given by M. Fagniez, Etudes aur I'lnduiirie i
Paris aux Xllllme et au XlVime si^cle, p. 6.
FRANCE 223
Are we not, then, safe in saying, as our learned master
Emile Levasseur says in his great work, La Papulation Fran-
gaise (Vol. I, p. 154) : "One may, without fear of error, when
one considers the two extremes of the period, assert that the
total population of France increased considerably from the
ninth to the fourteenth century, if not everywhere and in a
continuous manner, at least taken as a whole."
This suggestion rests on pure hypotheses. But of one of
them, the figure for the population in the ninth century,
this is what Levasseur himself tells us in a passage near the
one we have just quoted "From these data (those of the
Polyptique of Irminon) it is not possible to draw an hypothesis
suflficiently sound as to the numerical state of the population
in the Frankish empire." (See ib., p. 134.)
Among the scattered fragments of demographical statis-
tics of this time which ought to be noted, we shall mention
some figures which relate to the military organization. The
great interest which that organization held for the feudal
monarchy of the twelfth and the thirteenth century suffi-
ciently explains the application of enumerations to the enroll-
ment of the armies. A document known as a prisSe, the
date of which is placed between 1190 and 1202, gives the
figures for the armed contingent due Philip Augustus from
the commoners (roturiers) and the communes. That was a
new military resource which the feudal monarchy had not
obtained without great effort. The figures for the contin-
gent due from the cities and the communes are foimd in a
document of a somewhat later date; for the eight bailiwicks
of Sentis, Vermandois, Orleans, Bourges, Sens, Paris, Amiens
and Gisors they amounted to 6,270 sergents with 153 chariots.
Finally, we have for the year 1231 a fairly detailed Ust of
the troops sent by St. Louis against the Count of Brittany,
and we find there precious information as to the composition
of the royal army at that time.*
* See in Etudes sur le RSgime Financier de la France atant 1789, by Vuitry, the
interesting chapter devoted to military service under the monarchy from Hugh
Capet to Philip the Fair (pp. 372-384).
224 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Financial Statistics in the Middle Ages
After the land and its inhabitants there is, in every
organized society and even in a society on the way to organi-
zation, a subject which it is impossible to avoid measuring
numerically, that is, financial facts, the total of receipts and
expenses which are inseparable from the very existence of
the state, however modest their character. The most
embryonic of financial systems cannot be conceived in prac-
tice without the aid of statistics. The domain of finance is
essentially the domain of figures and, consequently, that of
statistics. In it one makes statistical enumerations with-
out intending to and without suspecting it, as Monsieur
Jourdain spoke prose, and even those individuals or states
of whom one sometimes says they spend without counting
do not succeed in escaping it long.
That there were in the Middle Ages public finances and,
consequently, financial facts no one can doubt. That gives
us the right to say that there were also financial statistics.
But it is hardly necessary to add that the value of those
statistics depends closely on the worth of the departments of
public service whose duty it was to prepare them. And one
can understand without difficulty that the financial statis-
tics of the feudal monarchy reflect all the imperfections of
its financial organization. These imperfections are well
known, and we need not recite them here.*
* There exists an immense literature on the finances of Ancient Prance. See
Stourm, Bibliographie HiMorique des Finances de la France au XVIIIime Siicle
IV, in -8°, 1895. To those who wish to find in detail the organization of finan-
cial statistics in the organization of Finance itself we shall confine ourselves to
citing: among ancient authors Jean Hennequin, Le Guidon Qen&ral des Finan-
ciers, 1585, in -12°. This book is hard to read, but it is extremely instruc-
tive in all that concerns financial organization from the fall of the Roman
Empire to the sixteenth century. Among the moderns: Vuitry, Etudes sur le
Regime Financier de la France avani 1783, 3 Vols. g. in -8°, 1878-1883, bearing on
the period between the fifth century and the end of the fourteenth. — Bouchard,
Systhm Financier de I'Ancienne Monarchic, in -8°, 1891. — Glasson, Histaire du
Droit et des Institutions de la France, Vol. V, pp. 490-546, and Vol. VI, pp. 1-
152. — Brissaud, Histoire G&n&rale du Droit Fransais public et privi. Vol. I, pp.
908-961.
FRANCE 225
We possess only a small number of documents of financial
statistics of this time, and moreover they are for the most
part obscure and full of lacunas. When several of them
bear on the same facts, their figures are often very different
and nothing explains the differences. All their figures are
approximate and uncertain and ought not to be accepted
without reserve. And there is the strongest reason for dis-
trusting figures set down for us by historians who were
ingenious rather than learned, who do not resist strongly
enough the temptation to reconstruct out of whole cloth a
vanished past. Do they not pretend to give us exactly
the Bvdget des recettes et des dSpenses de la Monarchic,
under Philip Augustus (1180-1223), under St. Louis (1226-
1270) and under Philip the Fair (1285-1314)? The unfor-
tunate thing is that it is much to be feared that they are
creating a work of imagination as well as of science. The
truth, as Vuitry very justly says (Vol. I, p. 303, nouvelle
serie), is that "the ancient monarchy never had a real
budget: at the beginning of the fourteenth century neither
receipts nor expenses were yet of such nature that they
could be seriously assessed in order to be as a consequence
checked by the government.*
Land Statistics of the Middle Ages
We have no statistical document especially concerned
either with the population or with the finances between the
eighth century and the fourteenth. But the case is other-
wise with the land. The agricultural exploitations which
the land sustains are the object of enumerations the results
of which were habitually inscribed on a polyptique, that is to
say, according to the etymology of the word, a sheet folded
several times.
It is the polyptique which at this time replaces or com-
pletes the census which the Roman Empire had established
* The statute of January 19, 1314, one of the last acts of Philip the Fair, has as its
object not so much to constitute a budget as to divide by specializing them, from the
point of view of expenses to pay, the Treasury of the Temple and that of the Louvre.
16
226 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in its provinces to serve as a basis for the division of imposts.
We have been more fortunate with it than with the tabulce
censorcB of Rome. Of those not a vestige remains. One
easily understands why when one considers the revolutions
of which Rome and her provinces were the theater. On
the contrary, we possess remarkable fragments of polyp-
tiques.
One of the most important and most justly celebrated is
the Polyptique of the Abbey of Saint Germain-des-Pr6s,
known as the Polyptique de I'abbS Irminon, after the man
through whose eflforts and under whose direction it was
established in the year 806.*
The extent of the domain of the abbey is estimated by
Gu6rard to have been 430,000 hectares, about the area of
one of our medium French departments. But the details
contained in the Polyptique are limited to 221,000 hectares
situated in the departments of the Seine, Seine-et-Oise,
Seine-et-Marne, Eure-et-Loir, Orne, Eure, and Indre.
These details deal with the difiFerent categories of land, with
the alleux, lands free from impost and rent, and with the
h6n6fices, lands burdened with different sorts of rent in
exchange for the assured protection of the lord. The tenures
or manses included in the category of bSn^ices are by far
the most numerous. There were 1,646 of them as against
24 seigneurial tenures.f A separate paragraph is devoted
to each Mn^fice; the extent and composition of the tenure,
from the point of view of the different varieties of culture
found there, are indicated as well as the names of the tenants,
those of their wives and children, and thus it is that some
♦ The text of this polyptigve was published in 1834 by Guerard. The work in 8
volumes which this scholar, in 1844, devoted to the Polyptique of Abb6 Irminon,
with its prolegomena, its commentaries and elucidations, is of great interest both
for the history of statistics and for the economic and social history of the Middle
Ages. Another French scholar, M. Longnon, published in 1886, in docimients
relating to the history of the City of Paris, a new edition of the Polyptique of Irminon.
t In each holding was a dwelling house of varying importance. The 24 seigneu-
rial tenures covered a surface of 204,000 hectares, of which 197,600 were woodland.
The 1,646 tributary tenures occupied only 15,000 hectares, of which 152 were wood-
land.
PRANCE 227
elements of dempgraphical statistics are found mingled with
land statistics.
One would like to know what precisely was the nature
and value of this document. But in this regard we lack
exact and sure information. It is nevertheless permissible
to suppose that the Polyptique of Saint Germain-des-Pr6s
was more than a document of a private nature drawn up by
the Abbott Irminon to facilitate the administration of the
domains which came under his authority. It was rather an
official and authentic document. This character was im-
pressed on it by the intervention of officers of the king, in
whose presence were made, by those interested, declarations
which served as a basis for the census. It could constitute
a true registry-book for property and a civil census of people.
One has every ground for believing that, once established,
it was continued indefinitely; one knows indeed that the
changes which supervened in the condition of property or
in that of people could be mentioned there. The Polyptique
of Irminon bears the trace of numerous changes of this kind
and the blank spaces which one notices at the close of the
chapters seem intended to receive them.
For the other polyptiques of this epoch, drawn up by order
of the kings, the bishops or the abbotts, we shall confine our-
selves to referring to the list of them which Gu6rard gives
(Vol. I, pp. 18-25) and to completing it by the mention of the
Polyptique of the Church of Saint Paul, at Lyon, which
contains the enumeration of tenants, possessions, rents and
revenues of that church in the thirteenth century.*
The word polyptique, moreover, was not by any means
the only word used to designate statistical tables dealing
with the land. The word had both synonyms and deriva-
tives. Its synonyms were breviarium, rationarium, capitu-
latium, inventarium, planarium. Its derivatives were pole-
ticum, puleticum, puletum, pulegium, whence came the word
pouilU as applied especially to the estate of the b6nefices
of a diocese, of an abbey, of a monastery.
* This Polyptique was published in 1875 by M. Guigne, 1 Vol. in-4°.
228 MEMORIAL VOLUME
//. Statistics in France from the Beginning of the Fourteenth
Century to the End of the Sixteenth
As in the preceding period, enumerations are limited to
the satisfaction of essential needs of public authority, and
one has difficulty in discovering here any trace of appre-
ciable improvement. They remain very imperfect because
they continue to be carried out without method by the
automatic and unconscious play of a still rudimentary ad-
ministration.
There take place, however, between the beginning of the
fourteenth century and the end of the sixteenth, between
Philip the Fair and Henry IV, some changes which are of
great importance in the history of statistics in France.
Enumerations become much more frequent. They are
not better made, but they increase in the more and more
extended domain over which the royal power is exercised;
and that is to end by attracting the attention of those who
reflect on the conditions of good state administration. Thus
well before the end of the sixteenth century Jean Bodin, in
his Six Limes de la RSpublique, is to write that admirable
chapter on la Censure in which we find for the first time the
necessity of enumerations set forth with so much force and
proved so ingeniously.
The increasing extension of royal power is the only, the
profound cause of the development of statistics in France
from the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century.
That extension manifests itself in two ways, by police
measures [and by fiscal measures; police measures and fiscal
measures which are inspired by very different considerations
but which are very often closely connected and the execu-
tion of which, in any case, cannot be conceived without
numerical knowledge of the things and persons to which
they apply.
PRANCE 229
The First Applications of Economic Statistics
The police measures arise from the economic policy of
the monarchy. A policy of intervention and excessive
regulation which equals, if it does not sometimes surpass,
the regulation by which our contemporary socialists imagine
social progress can be realized, and the chief end of which,
loudly proclaimed, was the protection of consumers. It
was a question of safeguarding their interests by rendering
impossible their exploitation by the producers and especially
by the tradesmen. The pretension was to keep the popula-
tion not only from absolute lack of indispensable necessi-
ties, from famine, but from want and even simply from high
prices. To this end it was necessary to be master of produc-
tion, transportation and markets, it was necessary to render
obligatory the conditions and forms of sale and to limit the
price by establishing a maximum. Well, how could that
be brought about without incessant enumerations to make
known the quantities produced, the quantities brought to
market and the quantities demanded?
The monarchy soon learned the advantage it could gain
from the organization of the trades in corporations to extend
first over Paris and its vicomtS, then over the rest of France,
the close- woven mail-shirt of its policy of intervention.
That is why it applied itself so carefully to the work of
organization. Its eflForts were crowned with success from
the beginning of the fourteenth century,* and they resulted
in transforming into an instrument of economic tyranny
institutions which had, at first, protected the liberty of the
workers. So we learn the existence and forms of certain
enumerations from the regulations of the corporations.
Corn was throughout the ancient regime, almost equally
with money, the merchandise par excellence, the regulation
of which has most often occupied public authority.
* So King Charles V could assert in 1372 without arousing any objection: "qu'au
Toi seul appartient et pour le tout en son royaume et non k autre, d'octroyer et d'or-
donner toutes foires et tous marches" (to the king belongs for the whole of his king-
dom and not to another the right to license and control all markets). See Glasson,
Histoire du Droit et dea Institutiona de la France, Vol. VI, p. 39.
230 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Beside the corporation of talemeliers (bakers) and that of
hlatiers (corn merchants), there is mentioned in theiifre des
MStiers of Etienne Boileau, Prev6t of Paris from 1254 to
1271, the corporation of measurers. To this corporation
belongs the honor of having been for the first time especially
called upon to fulfill a statistical function.
The measurers were authorized to measure corn sold in
the Paris market every time the quantity exceeded a setier,
about 156 litres of corn. But their intermediary r6le be-
tween merchants and buyers was not confined to measuring.
It extended to the verification and guarantee of the quality
and of the price.*
They were also called upon to know most of the business
transacted in the market. The only thing that could escape
them was the retail sales, that is to say, sales which involved
quantities not exceeding a setier. So it became the custom
to ask them to make out the memoranda of transactions
in which they had a hand. In this regard an ordinance of
the PrSvot des Marchands drawn during the reign of Charles
VII, July 2, 1438, reads as follows: "They shall be required
to certify and to report every Saturday in the presence of
the Clerk of the PrivotS of Paris the price which corn {blS-
froment) shall have been valued at that day and the indication
of the quantities sold, also the transaction in grain at the
highest price at which it shall have been sold, together with
the places where the said grain shall be believed to be."
And the ordinance of 1438, which probably did nothing more
than regulate a custom already ancient, was confirmed by
three others of December 12, 1471, November 23, 1546,
and November 21, 1577.
This is a remarkable example of the application of sta-
tistics to some of the most important facts of economic life.
One could surely find other examples of it. There were
from the first, always in everything that concerned corn,
enumerations which were not periodic but rendered neces-
* See in I'Histoire GSn4rale de Paris, the volume devoted to the Livre dea MMieri,
by Etienne Boileau, with the Introduction by Messrs. de Mespinasse and Bonnardot,
p. XXVI of the Introduction and pp. 18-20 of the text.
FRANCE 231
sary by accidental circumstances. So in 1304 the price of
corn in Paris having reached the figure, which was thought
altogether extraordinary, of 5 and 6 livres a setier, Philip
the Fair ordered the PrhSt des Marchands to have a census
made of all the corn harvested in the vicomtS of Paris, to
leave the quantity necessary for local consumption and to
have the rest brought to the nearest market. The same
thing was done in the reign of Charles VI in 1391.*
And it is not only the census of corn but also that of many
other commodities, wine and meat among others, which had
to be more or less regularly taken. The gaugers formed a
corporation whose business it was to do for liquids what
the measurers did for grain. Why should not they likewise
have checked up the quantities brought to market and the
prices? The statutes of the profession of butcher, though
they go back to Philip Augustus (1180 to 1223), do not
figure, one does not know just why, in the Livre des Metiers.
But we know from the author of Minagier de Paris (1393)
that they knew at that time the number of butcher-shops in
Paris, the number of butchers and even the number of head
of cattle delivered each week for consumption.!
Perhaps it may be remarked that the different enumera-
tions of which we have just spoken apply only to the vicomtS
of Paris. That is true. But we shall ask that it also be
noticed, on the one hand, that the vicomtS of Paris was from
the beginning of the fourteenth century one of the most
important territorial and administrative divisions of the
realm,J and on the other hand, that according to the just
observation of Delamare§ "the policy pursued in the Paris
markets influences all the other cities of the realm."
* See Fagniez, Etude sur Vlnduslrie d. Paris au XIII ime et a XIV erne SHcle, pp.
155-156.
t See Fagniez, loe. dt. pp. 181-182. According to the M^nagier de Paris the
number of head of live stock consumed each week in Paris was 3,626 sheep, 583
beef, 377 veal, 592 swine.
t The vicmnU of Paris, which was to become later the glnSralitS of Paris, included,
about 1328, 567 parishes and 113,786 families. See Levasseur, La Population
Frangaise, Vol. I, p. 156.
§ See TraiU de la Police, 4 vols. in-4°, 1722, Vol. II, pp. 79-80.
232 MEMORIAL VOLUME
But two measures of a general incontestable character
were adopted, one under Francis I, by the ordinance of
Villers-Cotterets (August, 1539), the other under Charles
IX by the edict of the chancelier Biragne (1572). The first
made it obligatory for the municipal authorities of each
seneschal town or baiUwick (chef-lieu de sSnSchaussSe ou
bailliage) to draw up a weekly statement of provisions, corn,
wine, hay and other such merchandise. The second made
it obligatory to draw up a semi-annual statement of the
condition of the harvests.*
The trades plied and the markets held in the urban cen-
ters were not the only things regulated at this period.
Agriculture was, too, and here, as always, regulation often
had as a condition and as a result the making of an enumera-
tion. Thus when Charles IX wished to limit, by an edict
promulgated in 1566, the area devoted to vineyards to a
third of all arable lands, one can hardly admit that such a
decision was made unless it was based on the data furnished
by some sort of enumeration.!
Finally, we should not forget that maritime commerce,
eveli that, from the thirteenth century, was subject to numer-
ous and minute regulations. In Atlantic ports, as in those
on the Mediterranean, imports and exports were closely
watched by agents in the service of the king. These agents
were under a high ojEcial created by Philip the Fair, ordi-
nance of February 1, 1305, under the name of Maitre de»
Fonts et Passages, in whom we can discern the distant an-
cestor of our present Director General of Customs. The
customs system instituted in the first half of the fourteenth
century looked after exportations particularly, sometimes
to prohibit them altogether, sometimes to load them with
heavy duties. By an ordinance of December, 1324, these
* See Levasseur, Note sut Vorganizaiion du service des subsiMances et la publication
dea Mercuriales, XXVeme anniversaire de la SocUU de Siatistigue de Paris (1886)^
p. 192 et seg.
t See Moreau de Jonn&s, Etai Economique et Social de la France de 1689 d 1715„
p. is et seq.
FRANCE 235
duties had to be established according to the nature and
quantity of the objects exported without regard to their
value. All this regulation, which was extremely complex,
for its aims were at once political, economic and fiscal, could
not go on without real enumerations.* Their results un-
fortunately have not come down to us because they were
not methodically collected and preserved. We assume
their existence rather than prove it. But how many proofs
lack the strength of the hypothesis which we establish
here!
Financial Statistics
After the enumerations, chiefly of an economic order, of
which we have just spoken, it remains for us to say a word
about the financial and the demographic enumerations.
From the beginning of the fourteenth century financial
enumerations assume an importance which increases inces-
santly up to the French Revolution. This is easily explained
by the fact that all the kings of France, without exception,
have been in need of money and for them financial questions
were the vital questions. And here it is not an hypothesis,
which we are laying down: it is a fact which we verify and
which impresses the mind of the attentive observer more and
more forcibly as the financial departments of public service
extend and grow strong. In the period which we are now
considering, as in the preceding period, the historian of
statistics ought always to remember that the domain of
finance is essentially the domain of numbers; that to engage
in finance is to count at the same time as to pay, and that
any financial service whatever in order to function must
make enumerations. Consequently, for us to be justified
in asserting the existence of financial statistics from the
fourteenth century to the sixteenth and even to some extent
in estimating the value of those statistics, it is suflBcient for
us to know the mechanism and the method of procedure of
* See, for the maritime commerce of France from the twelfth century on,
Levasseur, Hiataire du Commerce en France, Vol. I, pp. 147-174, and Glasson, loe.
eit. Vol. VI, pp. 35-43.
234 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the financial institutions of the time. Now, from PhiHp
Augustus on, the rich and abundant collection of Ordinances
of the French Kings and books of the type of that of Jean
Hennequin, Le Guidon Giniral des Financiers (1585), throw
full light on the subject.
The French monarchy did not possess the resources of a
permanent, obligatory impost prior to 1439, and before
1498 a budget was almost unknown in the sense which we
give the word today, namely, an annual detailed tabulation
of the expenses and receipts of the state. But well before
1498, even before 1439, the monarchy had organized in a
substantial way its system of public accounts both as regards
expenditures and as regards receipts.
It was forced to this by the double necessity of yielding to
the will of those {Etats-GSnSraux, Seigneurs, ClergS) who
granted it taxes which it had not yet the power to impose on
them, and to protect itself against the waste with which its
treasury was continuously threatened. The two tresoriers
gSniraux existing under Philip the Fair, one of the Temple,
the other of the Louvre, rendered their accounts to the king
himself. One finds in the Bibliotheque Nationale the journal,
written in Latin, of one of these treasurers for the years 1298
to 1307 with detailed entries, day by day, of all expendi-
tures and all receipts. It is one of the rare original financial
documents of the time which we possess.* But the con-
trol was much strengthened when Philip the Fair, by the
ordinance of April 20, 1309, transformed the Chambre aux
Deniers into the Chambre des Comptes, and when the latter
was definitely organized, under the reign of Philip the Fair,
by the ordinance of July 13, 1318.t
Now, what are the laws of accounting and comptroUing
but the natural frame-work of financial statistics? When it
*See Glasson, loc. cii. Vol. VL p. 92.
t The organization of the Chambre des Comptes was completed and strengthened
by the celebrated ordinance of May 26, 1413, after the revolt of the Cabochiens.
One may find on this subject interesting details in the thoroughly documented
book by M. Coville, Les Cabochiens et I'ordinance de H13. (Book I, Ch. Ill and
Book IV, Ch. II.)
FRANCE 235
is a question of receipts and expenditures, whether ordinary
or extraordinary, temporary or permanent, it is impossible
to set them down in the account books and to make a peri-
odic statement of them to an authority invested with the
power of supervision, without giving an enumeration of
them. That is true in our time. It could not be otherwise
in the period we are considering.
The next question is what was the value of these financial
enumerations and the statistical doquments to which their
results had to be consigned? A very small number of these
documents have come down to us, which is very natural, if
one remembers that they were relatively rather rare, that
they were strictly confidential, and that in the absence of
archives their preservation was not well insured. At the
same time we may believe that their quality was very medio-
cre. Everything conspired to falsify the figures of financial
statistics in this period from the fourteenth century to the
sixteenth which was constantly confused by war, foreign war
and civil, and in which over the head of our kings the real
sovereign was almost always anarchy. Those who disposed
of public revenues, the comptrollers (comptables) and the
paymasters (ordonnateurs), for they had been separated as
early as the fourteenth century, were often dishonest.
Examples of their malversations were numerous. The
Chambre des Comptes itself was sometimes their accomplice.*
Its heads and clerks did not hesitate to alter the figures when
they saw a chance of profit.
And when the figures furnished were not falsified by those
who had set them down, they were often falsified by those
who had to make use of them. They were often falsified by
the king himself. And here are two examples borrowed from
the history of the Etats G6n6raux held at Tours in 1484.
The receipts from the domain of Normandy were put at 22,000
livres; a deputy from the province rose to declare that there
were in the assembly people ready to put it at 40,000. The
province of Burgundy reported annually 80,000 livres.
* See Glasson, loc. dt. Vol. VI, pp. 124 and 126.
236 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The representative of the king ascribed to it a revenue of
18,000.
The figures were falsified also by the contemporaneous
publicists who tried to rouse public opinion about the de-
plorable administration of the finances of the state and who
succeeded, thanks to the indiscretions of the king's officials,
in rescuing from the mystery with which they were sur-
rounded scattered fragments of budgets and accounts. For
it is in the diatribes of the opponents of royal power and
not in the original and authentic documents that we find
the rare data of financial statistics of this period.
One of the most curious books in this respect, which saw
the light during the second half of the sixteenth century
(1581) and which it is fitting to mention in the history of
French statistics, is Le Secret des Finances de France dScou-
vert et dSparti en trois livres, by Nicolas Froumenteau. It
reveals to us at the same time the importance and the
defects of financial statistics in this unhappy period of the
history of our country. It is rich in figures, even the figures
which the king had refused to communicate to representa-
tives of the Etats held at Blois in 1577, and the author finds
there at once proof of the marvelous richness of France
and of the extravagances committed to the detriment of the
royal treasury. But it is difficult to take them seriously.
Froumenteau carefully refrains from indicating the source of
them just as he takes care not to let us know his real name,*
and he renders them suspect by the unrestrained passion
with which he makes use of them. Under his pen the figures
become a political weapon and they seem intended to con-
trovert rather than to explain. His work has nothing in
common with "one of the first methodical essays in statis-
tics" which Maurice Blockf found it to be. It is not,
* The probable author of the Secret des Finances de France is a protestant publicist,
Nicolas Bamaud du Crest, who occupied an impoitant place in his party. (See
Noutelle Biographie Universelie, — ^Didot — , Vol. 18, p. 952.)
t See TraiU Thiorique el Pratique de Siatistigue, 2d Edit., p. 34.
FRANCE 237
moreover, as Baudrillart called it,* "the real point of depart-
ure of the history of French statistics." And we refuse to
admit with M. Espinasf that the Frenchman of the six-
teenth century, hidden under the pseudonym Froumenteau,
is "the first who knew how to handle the instrument par
excellence of political economy, statistics." Le Secret des
Finances is the work of a politician, not that of a statistician.
It is a pamphlet, full of spirit, to be sure, and full of truth
at bottom, aimed at the odious and scandalous administra-
tion of the Valois. It is not a statistical document.
Demographic Statistics
Between the first years of the fourteenth century and the
end of the sixteenth, enumeration of the French population,
as we practice it today, was wholly unknown. But in
default of enumerations of individuals, there were enumera-
tions of groups, such as towns, villages and parishes, families
and households. The enumeration of households is far
the most frequent and also very probably the most carefully
done. The household, indeed, was not only a demographic
unit, it was also a fiscal unit; it was not only a home (foyer),
a menage, it was a quota of taxation, and upon it, even
before they became permanent and obligatory, were imposed
the subsidies demanded by the king.
"Etats de subsides" was the name given to documents to
which were consigned the results of enumerations of parishes
and households undertaken in the territory of the royal
<lomain with a view to establishing direct imposts gathered
for the benefit of the king in the time when, in order to get
them, he had to appeal to the good will of the contributors,
"They were tax-lists rather than statistics of population,"
^ays Emile Levasseur. J We beg the learned master's pardon.
Statistics of population were the basis of the Stats de subsides.
No doubt the purpose behind it was fiscal rather than demo-
* See Dea TMories PoUtiques et des IdSes Economique) au XV lime aUcle, p. 87,
«nd to the same effect, Levasseur, La Population Frangaise, Vol. I, p. 55.
t See Histoire des Doctrines Economiques, p. 166.
% See La PojndaHon Frarmaise, Vol. I, p. 169, note 2.
238 MEMORIAL VOLUME
graphic. But that did not alter the nature of it. It was
population statistics as they were then understood and
practiced.
The Mats de subsides were drawn up as need might arise,
by functionaries called " Commissaires" du rai. They were
not periodic, and that is easy to understand because up to
1439 only exceptional circumstances justified the demand
for subsidies. Some applied to the entire kingdom, with its
divisions and subdivisions into bailiwicks, sSnSchaussSes,
seigneuries (chdtellenies), shires (vicomtSs) and cities; others
applied only to one of these divisions and subdivisions.
The more extensive were naturally the more infrequent.
Their contents were not fixed in an invariable fashion.
The number of parishes and households, the figure of re-
ceipts to be collected seem to be the minimum of data which
we find gathered together in them. In certain manuscripts*
it is a question of the name of the inhabitants and an esti-
mate of their property. But it could only be a question of
the heads of the households and their patrimony.
Dureau de la Malle discovered in 1829, among the manu-
scripts in our Archives Nationales and in our Bibliotheqtie
Nationcde, the text of an Stat de subside drawn up in the
course of the first half of the fourteenth century, probably
on the occasion of the Flemish war, under the title: "C'est
la manihre comme le subside jut fait pour I'ost (armSe) de
Flandre et que il Tnonta; ce qu'on peut trouver par les contes
rendus";^ it constitutes, together with the memoranda of the
intendants of the last years of the seventeenth century, a
capital document of demographic statistics under the ancient
rigime, though it belongs to a time when imposts had not
yet become permanent and obligatory. There is difference
of opinion as to what date ought to be assigned to it. Some
refer it back to the year 1328, and others to the year 1345.^
* See the manuscript cited by Levasseur (loc. dt.) relating to the legistiation of
the assessments (rSpartition) of the households of Castel Sarrozin, 1414.
t "This is the way the subsidy was made for the host (army) of Flanders and
what it amounted to; which can be found in the accounts rendered" — Tr.
t See Dureau de la Malle, MSmoires de I'AcadSmie des Inscription et Belles Lettres,
FRANCE 239
But that is a small matter and does not detract from the
interest presented by the figures which we find there, those
for the parishes and those for the households, between 1304
and 1345, in the territory which then constituted the royal
domain and which equalled about half the actual area of
France. These figures are given separately by chdtellenies
and towns for the vicomtS of Paris, by bailiwicks and sSnS-
chatissSes for the rest of the realm. They amount in total
to 24,150 for the parishes and 2,411,149 for the households.
They are and can be only approximate, but they are by far
the most trustworthy that we have, and it is going too far
to pretend with M. d'Avenel that they ought to be con-
sidered "of no value from the point of view of population"
or to speak with Moreau de Jonn^s of "their unbelievable
results" (leur incroyables rSsuUats).
What diminishes their value, but without destroying it,
is the extreme difficulty which one finds in basing on them
a&vestimate of the figure for the total population of the
epoc^ In the first place, indeed, we have no way of know-
fib^ ^^ctly how many persons made up a household. It
■migr^ run from one or two persons to five or six or even
more, according to whether it consisted of a celibate or of a
numerous family, and as for discovering a plausible average
figure, we shall have to give that up, for we lack every ele-
ment necessary for a serious calculation. Even those who
will not give it up, and they are many, must recognize that
the composition of a household varied according to the
period and in the same period according to the district.*
Vol. 14, 2d Part, p. 36. — Moreau de Jonn^, Etat Economique et Social de la France
de 1589 d 1716, p. 26. — ^Levasseur, La Population Frangaise, Vol. I, p. 15S and ff. —
D'Avenel, Histoire Economique de la PropriMi, des Salairea, des DenrSes et de tous let
Prix en G6n(ral de Pan 1200 a Van 1800, Vol. 3, p. 429 ,and S. — Vintry, Etudes aur le
Regime FinawAer de la France avant 1789, Vol. II, p. 7 and ff.
* On the number of persons included in a household one can read with profit,
besides the passages from Levasseur and M. d'Avenel which we have just cited:
1. The extended explanations of the word Feux, by I'abbi Expilly in the 3d Vol.
of his great Dictionnaire GSographique, Historique et Politique des Gaules et de la
France (6 Vol. in-folio, 1761-1767);
2. All the fourth chapter of the third book of I'Economie Politique duMoyen-
■240 MEMORIAL VOLUME
And we know, in the second place, that not all the inhabi-
tants of the country were accounted for in the division
into households. The nobles and priests did not figure there
nor did the villeins and serfs who had less than ten livres
parisis, those whom today we call paupers (indigents).
Now, we cannot say, even approximately, what in the course
of the fourteenth century was the number of these different
categories of people.
In default of figures furnished by the Mats de subsides we
have for the fifteenth century and for the second half of the
sixteenth those that we find in certain writings of the epoch.
But they generally err by evident exaggeration. Such
writings are: those of the historian who wrote, in the Grand
Chroniques de France, the history of the reign of Charles VI
(1380-1422), and who mentions a count of the year 1404
which attributes to France 1,700,000 towns and villages;*
those of Louis Boulenger, author of a pretended cadastre of
France, ordered by Charles IX, in 1570, who estimated the
number of towns and villages at 130,000 and the number of
households at 25,000,000 ;t those of Nicolas Froumenteau
who reduces the number of households to 4,000,000, but who
raises the number of "paroisses cm clochiers" to 132,000.
So it seems that one ought to refuse to follow the learned
men of our time who pretend to calculate fairly accurately
either the figure for the total population of France during
the three centuries which we are considering, or the figure
for the population of certain cities, notably Paris.f It is
with these figures as it is with those in which certain authors
pretend to give us, year by year, from 1200 to our own time.
Age by Cibrario, Vol. II, pp. 125-136 of the French translation by Bareaud. —
According to the Italian economist, the household in France, of the first half of the
fourteenth century must have included at least six persons; this number might
increase to seven in the great cities, such as Milan, Paris, London, and even to eight
in the university cities.
* See Moreau de JonnSs, loc. cU. pp. 16-17.
t See Moreau de Jonnds, loc. dt. pp. 11-13.
t See, on the population attributed to Paris and on the very divergent figures
'which have been proposed: Dupre de Saint-Maur, Essai sur lea Monnaieg (1746),
pp. 59-63. — Levasseur, loc. cit. Vol. I, pp. 154 ff. — D'Avenel, loc. cit. pp. 430 ff.
FRANCE 241
the price of corn, of bread, of cultivable land, of houses.*
All these tables of prices, dating back to the Middle Ages,
are, at least for the period between 1200 and 1600, ingenious
but uncertain constructions. They have only the appearance
of genuine historical documents. Instead of relying on the
sure data of regular enumerations, they are made up with
the aid of isolated figures, drawn from the most diverse
sources, which are most often the expression of an opinion
rather than of an established fact. It is well to be especially
distrustful of them when they contain averages of the sort
that M. d'Avenel offers us in Vol. II, pp. 882-914, of his
learned work, Histoire Economique de la PropriitS, des
Denries, des Salaires et de tous les Prix en GinSral. Prices
from the thirteenth century to the eighteenth do not lend
themselves to averages; their extreme diversity either in
time or in space makes the computing of averages impos-
sible.
Statistics of population are not Uxnited to the enumeration
of the inhabitants of a country. They extend to the facts
which determine and variate the figure for the population,
to marriages, births and deaths. But in order for statistics
* Not only in France but also in England works of thb sort have been often under-
taken. We shall confine ourselves to citing for England:
1. The tables published by Fleetwood, bishop of Ely, in his Chronicon preiioaum,
printed in London in 1707, covering the years from 1494 to 1706, and continued by
G. Warden from 1706 to 1740, by warrant of an Act of Parliament.
2. The numerous figures which one finds in the two works of Thorold Rogers,
Histoire de V Agriculture et det Prix and Histoire du Travail et des Salaires en
Angleterre.
3. The tables of prices, beginning with the year 1401, which Thomas Tooke
inserted or cited in the fifth volume, pp. 345-443, of his great work. History of
Prices 1793 to 1866 (6 Vol. 1858). See Tooke's observations on the value of these
tables, very different in the different periods, p. 347.
For France:
1. The table of "variations arrivies dans le prix de diverses choses pendant le eours
des cinq demiers siicles lS0S-17iS," published in I'essai sur les Monnaies de 1746,
by Dupr6 de Saint-Maur.
i. The table of prices of the setier of com (Paris measure) by Germain Gamier,
inserted at the end of Vol. I of the Recherehes sur la Nature et les Causes de la Richess
des Nations by Adam Smith.
3. The tables of prices which fill Vol. II (914 pp.) of the great work of M. d'Avenel.
17
242 MEMORIAL VOLUME
to arrive at these facts, it is necessary that they be regularly
verified. Here statistics are bound up with civil legislation,
and on its progress they depend for their progress. Now,
throughout the Middle Ages and up to the beginning of the
sixteenth century our civil legislation does not contain a
single statute concerning the establishment of the facts in
regard to what we call les actes de I'itat-civil. In this matter
civil legislation in France has been preceded and prepared
for by the usages and regulations of a religious character.
It is not connected by any bond of affiliation with the process
of enumerating births and deaths which we find applied in
Greece and Rome from the most remote times.
The practice of registering marriages and deaths appears
for the first time at the beginning of the fourteenth century
in certain regions of Burgundy. The reason for it was not
to verify civil acts in themselves but to register the payment
of sums due the curates on the occasion of their intervention
in the accompHshment of these acts. A century later, in
1406, in the Statutes of the Bishop of Nantes, Henri le
Barbu, registrations of baptisms are mentioned for the first
time. Their purpose was to furnish proof of the bonds of
kinship existing between the persons involved and to render
possible the sanction of the rules of Canonical Law which
prohibited the marriage of relatives.
It is not until 1539 that the action of royal power began to
be felt in this domain and that the ordinance of Villers-
Cotterets came to require of the curates the keeping of regis-
ters of baptism. This measure was sanctioned and even
extended to marriages in 1563, by the Council of Trente.
And it was definitely consecrated in 1579, by the ordinance
of Blois which for the first time set down in article 181 the
rules applicable to the keeping of three registers, of baptisms,
of marriages and of burials*
So, beginning at this date, one possessed the essential
elements of statistics of the actes de V etat-dvil. But the
* See VioUet, Histoire du Droit Franiais, 2d Edit., pp. 454 ff. — and Planiol,
Traiti EWnmiaire de Droit Civil, 4th Edit., Vol. I, pp. 168 ff.
FRANCE 243
utilization of those statistics was destined to wait a long
time. If from the sixteenth century some enlightened spirits
understand and demonstrate the great usefulness of enu-
merations of the population, their way of looking at it remains,
in this regard, without influence on the conceptions and
methods of public authorities.
III. Statistics in France in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries
The great investigations of Sully, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, those of Colbert in the middle and
toward the end of the centm-y, those of the Intendants, from
which result the first official documents of general statistics
in France, the creation, in the eighteenth century, of statis-
tics of the actes de I'etat civil and of some specialized depart-
ments of statistics, and finally the publicity given to the
financial statistics of the monarchy, these were the cardinal
points in the development of statistics in France between
1595 and 1800, between Sully, minister of Henry IV, and
Lucien Bonaparte, minister of Napoleon.
But this development no longer finds its sole explanation
in the needs of an administration with an incessantly in-
creased field of activity, or even in the necessity of rescuing
France from some violent and prolonged crisis of anarchy,
as was the case in 1595, in 1661 and in 1798; part of the
explanation, and there is a great new fact which it is well to
underhne, is to be found in the movement of thought and
in the doctrines which took shape toward the middle of the
second half of the sixteenth century, under the double in-
fluence of ideas surviving from Greco-Roman antiquity and
of the desire to find a remedy for the abuses and misdeeds of
the unhappy government of the Valois. These doctrines
were expounded for the first time, with an extraordinary
abundance of arguments, at once sohd and subtle, by Jean
Bodin, in 1577, in his immortal work, Les Six Livres de la
RSpublique (Bk. VI, Ch. 1), and we shall find them, forty
years later, in the TraitS d'Economie Politique published by
244 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Montchrdtien in 1615. They can be summed up thus: the
uses of the enumeration of subjects and of their revenues
are infinite; they aflford the means of insuring the defense of
the country and the peopUng of the colonies, of rendering
more clear the juridic condition of individuals, of knowing
"de quel estat chacun se mesh et quel mestier il exerce" (to
what social rank each one belongs and what is his occupa-
tion), of driving out vagabonds, loafers, robbers, ruflSans
who live in the midst of respectable people, of providing for
the just grievances of the poor against the rich, of laying and
collecting equitably the "thousand kinds of imposts" which
existed then and which "the ancients never knew," of
abolishing the extortions of the officials, "who distribute
and equalize taxes, subsidies and imposts," and finally of
"putting an end to all rumors, appeasing all complaints,
quieting all movements, suppressing all occasions for
riot."*
Although it is impossible to give a strict proof, it is in-
finitely probable that all the great statistical works of the
seventeenth century, the great investigations of Sully and of
Colbert, the editing of the memoranda of the Intendants, were
undertaken under the inspiration of Jean Bodin and Anthoyne
de Montchretien. Sully could not ignore Bodin. Colbert
had certainly read Montchretien. And when Fenelon taught
the Duke of Burgundy the usefulness of enumerations, when
he placed in the mouth of the mentor who instructed Bang
Idomeneus a complete program of general statistics, it is
the strong thought of Bodin and Montchretien that he
expressed.
Sully and Statistics
Sully entered the Conseil du roi in 1596 and he became su-
perintendent of finance in 1599. Administrative anarchy
* See Jean Bodin, Les Six lAvres de la Ripvblique, Bk. VL Ch. 1. — De la Censure,
pp. 878-888; de Montchretien, TraitS d'Eeonomie Politique, Bk. IV — De I'exemple
et dea soins prineipaux du prince, pp. 345-353 of the edition Funk-Breutano. — De
Montchretien has confined himself to summing up, by reproducing them often
textually but without ever citing them, the results of Jean Bodin.
FRANCE 245
and "graft" (dilapidations) in the departments of finance
surpassed anything that we can imagine. The public
revenues were in the hands of an army of officials whose
ability and honesty alike left much to be desired. Expenses
were much greater than receipts. A small part of the re-
ceipts found their way to the Treasury. The public debt,
so far as it could be calculated, exceeded 330 million livres,
more than a billion francs in our money, truly a formidable
figure for that time.
To bring order out of this chaos, that was the mission
entrusted to Sully, and these were the first measures by
which he tried to fulfill it. He wanted to have a detailed
tabulation and an accurate inventory of all the debts and
all the revenues of the king, with a list of all those officers of
the crown, civil, military, judiciary, of the police and of the
departments of finance which it might be deemed necessary
to keep. But. how arrive at this except by enumerations
and figures? We know the program, the object, the aim of
the enumerations which were made at this time.* We know
even how they were carried out. Long and minute inves-
tigations were made by Sully himself and by his secretaries,
in the provinces as well as in Paris, in all the registers and
documents of the treasurers, receivers and Chambres des
Comptes. But what were the statistical results? We do
not know. We have only the right to suppose that they
did not give complete satisfaction to Sully. One thing that
would tend to prove this is that in trying, in a memorandum
of which his secretaries give us the complete text, to deter-
mine by figures the situation to which he should have to
apply his efforts, he takes care to remark that he confines
* Numerous figures and a throng of details on this subject are given to us in the
work which is usually known under the title Les Economies royales de SvUy, and of
which the exact title is MMnoires des Sages el Royales Economies d'Estat de Henry le
Grand. The eight volumes in -8° which these memoirs fill are part of the Col-
lection des M&moires relative to the history of Prance from the accession of Henry
rV to 1763. They are the work of obscure secretaries who mingle their stories and
reflections with the notes, memoirs, reports and letters of Sully and Henry IV.
They are hard to read but very instructive.
246 MEMORIAL VOLUME
himself to estimating (evcduer), "being impossible to compute
{supputer) anything with accuracy."*
However that may be, when these first researches were
once completed. Sully, in a letter of April 1, 1607, demanded
all the financial accounts from 1598 to 1607. After he had
received them, taking his inspiration from the verifications
which he could make by them, he decided, in agreement with
the king, to reform the whole French system of public
accounts.! The drawing up of new statistical statements,
the number of which reached 25, was made obUgatory on the
occasion of the estabUshment of the brevet gSniral of taxes
(taille) for 1609. J Then to crown his work of restoring to
health the finances of the king by methodically conducted
investigations. Sully resolved to create a Cabinet d' Archives,
intended to centraUze and preserve all the documents which
might henceforth constitute a record of an administration
that had become at once clearer and surer. Twice at least
in the Economies Royales, Sully's secretaries mention the
new institution. § They do it with such discretion that we
may well believe that they did not understand the importance
of it. Its creation, however, is, in the history of French
statistics, one of the facts which deserve not to be forgot-
ten.
But when Sully left his post in 1611, his method was
abandoned. However vigorous and well conducted his
work had been, it did not last long in circumstances hostile
to the thought that inspired it; it perforce remained too
superficial and fragile to survive him. Of his Cabinet d^ Ar-
chives, notably, in a short time nothing more was heard.
His successors, Richelieu and Mazarin, absorbed by the
* See Economies Scales, Vol. Ill, pp. 218-224.
t See Economies Royales, Vol. VII, pp. 353-357.
X See Economies Royales, Vol. VIII, pp. 4-23. The brevet g&niral of taxes (faiUe)
had to do only with the personal tax. It was the annual table in which the king
fixed six months in advance the total amount of the iaiUe for all parts of the country
where it was optional. There was none for the districts where the taiUe was com-
pulsory.
§ See Vol. lU, p. 218, and Vol. VHI, pp. 73-86.
PRANCE 247
task of realizing at any cost their vast political schemes,
were much more bent on wresting the royal finances from
the control of the States-General than on maintaining by
regular enumerations the correctness and clarity dear to
Henry IV. So that less than ten years after Henry's death,
the extravagances had begun again in full swing, most of the
financial officials being released from the regulations of
Sully. Disorder was at its height under Mazarin, and dur-
ing the first years of the reign of Louis XIV, from 1643 to
1661. And when Colbert entered the Conseil des Finances,
in 1661, when he became Controleur giniral in 1665, the
situation which he found resembled, so closely that one can
hardly tell the difference, that which Sully had found in
1595.*
Colbert and Statistics
Like Sully, Colbert had recourse to statistics, first to
clarify, then to reform, to measure the extent of the evil
before applying a remedy.
The enumerations of Colbert were made by maitres des
requites sent into all the provinces and equipped with instruc-
tions which were drawn up by Colbert in September, 1663.
The inquiry was not confined to financial operations. It
was to extend to all parts of the administration, to the clergy
as well as to officials of every degree, to commerce, to manu-
factures and even to the spirit and temper of the people of
each province.!
Two subjects especially attracted Colbert's attention, and
on these he did not cease to ask of the intendants information
which could not come without numerical tables, without
statistics; one was the distribution of the personal tax {repar-
* In 1620, 10 treasurers of the Savings Department (I'Epargne), more than 100
receivers-general, more than 120 tax-farmers (fermiers) and as many collectors
(traitants) who should have sent their accounts in every three months, had not
rendered them for five years. In 1665, la Chamhre de Justice, instituted by Colbert
against the traitants, found the responsible agents guilty, for a period of only six
months, of 384 millions of falsified statements and forged accoimts. (See Victor
Duruy, Chrmwhgie de I' Atlas Historique de la France, pp. 241 and 254.)
t See Clement, Lettres, Instructions et Mimoires de Colbert, Vol. II, pp. 2 fif.
248 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tition des tailles) and the abuses which it entailed, the other
was population, its number and movement.
He wrote in 1680, apropos of the tailles, "As that is the
matter in which the most abuses can be committed, it is
also that to which the most attention has been given and is
always given." These abuses resulted from the unjustified
extension of exemptions enjoyed by certain categories of
persons, the ecclesiastics, the nobles, the oflBcers of the king.
From the month of March, 1666,* he had a warrant issued for
the search of those who, to escape payment of the tailles,
usurped titles of nobility. And he required that a statement
of the exempt be sent to him regularly, as he wished to know
the extent of the frauds committed by the accounting officers
and discovered by the Chambre de Justice. On this subject
one should read his great memoir of 1663 on financial affairs.f
And as for the population, it is not only with the just ap-
portionment of taxes that he is concerned. In 1663 mor-
tahty had been great in the financial district of Tours. Col-
bert, in a letter of April 6 addressed to the intendant, asks for
"the number of inhabitants compared with the number three
or four years ago." Also, in a letter of September 16, 1672,
he questions the intendant of Alengon about the causes of the
increase and the diminution of population.f But the most
important measure in the matter of demographic statistics
at this time, the honor of which belongs to Colbert, is the
publication, for the City of Parip, beginning with the year
1670, of the number of actes de VHat-ciml (baptisms, births*
burials) which the curates of all the parishes of France were
obliged to register after the ordinance of Villers-Cotterets
(1539) and of Blois (1579). If the statistics of the actes de
I'Stat civil show, in France of the eighteenth century, the re-
* See Clement, loc. cit. Vol. I, Ch. VIII: les tailles; and Bailly, Hisioire Finaneitre
de la France, Vol. I, pp. 428-129. — Colbert was planning to suppress the peisonal
tax in the pays d'Slection (countries where it was optional? — Tr.) and to substitute
the property tax based on a firmly established assessment, when death overtook
him.
t See Lettres, Instructions et MSmoires, Vol. II, pp. 17-67.
i See Lettres, Instructions et Mimmres, Vol. II, p. 5 and pp. 251-252.
FRANCE 249
markable development of which we shall speak presently,
we owe it entirely to the happy initiative of Colbert.*
We may say that in the hands of Colbert, as in the hands
of Sully, statistics were the essential instrument with which
these two great ministers, sixty years apart and in strikingly
analogous circumstances, succeeded in reestablishing order
in the public finances and prosperity in the national economy
of France.
But Colbert was more fortunate than Sully. He was in
power longer and he succeeded in rooting his method deeply
enough in the administrative methods of the monarchy to
impose the following of that method on his successors.
Whereas Sully's work disappeared with him, Colbert's sur-
vived him. It was continued and to some extent devel-
oped by the series of 30 contrdleurs ginSraux who were in
oflBce from 1683 to 1789. From 1662 Colbert directed his
efforts especially to building up solidly all that has to do with
the Archives, the final organization of which, due to his far-
seeing purpose, has been so valuable in preserving the sta-
tistical documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies.f
The Successors of Colbert and Statistics
Pontchartrain, the immediate successor of Colbert, made
great efforts to insure the preservation of municipal archives
and those of the Intendances. The man who did perhaps
more than anyone else, with the help of his faithful commis
de cdntrole, Malet, both for the establishment of financial
statistics and for the preservation of documents in the
archives of the department of Finance, is Desmarets, who
was contrdleur gSnSral in 1708. After him mention should
be made of the contrdleurs giniraux, Marchault d'Arnouville,
* We have, thanks to Colbert, the statistics of VStat-cimi for Paris from 1670. We
lack the figures from 1684 to 1709. But we have them again continuously from
1709 to our time; See on this subject, Levasseur, La Population Frangaise, Vol. I,
pp. 248-249.
t See for fuller details the AvanUPropos by BoislDe in Vol. I of the Correspondence
des Contrdleurs Giniraux des Finances avec lea Iniendants des Provinces.
250 MEMORIAL VOLUME
de Silhouette and Bertin. The first allowed Forbonnais to
draw from the archives of the Contrdle giniral all the numer-
ous statistical elements of his Recherches et ConsidSrations sur
les Finances de la France depuis I'annSe 1595 jusqu'd, I'annee
1721. The second created "la bibliotheque des Finances."
The third conceived the idea, new and original at that time,
of having detailed notes gathered in all the courts of Europe
concerning "les impositions et droits" existing in the different
countries. From these notes were drawn up rnhnoires which
constitute the oldest document of Legislation et de Statistique
financieres comparees* which is to be found, not only in
France, but in any country.
The MSmoires of the Intendants
"Les MSmoires des Intendants," says Levasseur,t con-
stitute "the most considerable and the most complete docu-
ment which we possess on the economic and administrative
condition of ancient France and the only general view of
French population before 1780 which has an official char-
acter." There is no fault to find with this judgment of our
learned historian of French demographic statistics.
The Memoires des Intendants are 32 in number, one for
each of the 32 provinces or g6neralites into which the France
of Louis XIV was divided. Each one of them is a sort of
monograph of a province. Their object is as general as
possible. To convince oneself of this one has only to read
the questionnaireX which served as a program and plan, and
the title of the three folio volumes in which the due de Bou-
lainvillier made a resume of them in 1711. §
* The editing of these M&moires Concemant les Impositions et Droits en Europe,
which were published in 1768, was entrusted to the intendant des Finances, Moreau
de Beaumont.
fSee La Population Frangaise, Vol. I, p. 202.
i See the collection of MSmoires des Intendants, the publication of which was en-
trusted to M. de Boislile, in 1876, by the Minister of Public Instruction. Vol. I,
Mhnoire de la Oeneralite de Paris, pp. 2-3.
§ This is the title of the work: Etat de la France dans lequel on vait tout ce qui
regarde le gouvernement eccUsiastique, le militaire, la Justice, les Finances, le Com-
merce, les Manufactures, le nombre des habitants et en gSniral, tout ce qui pent faire
FRANCE 251
They were composed, in the course of the years 1698, 1699
and 1700, on a questionnaire drawn up by the due de Beau-
villier in consultation with Fenelon, and, doubtless, with
Vauban. We know that the due de Beauvillier was tutor
of the Duke of Burgundy and Fenelon was his instructor.
Without ever having been sharply defined, the object
of the inquiry directed to the intendants regarding the con-
dition of their giniraliUs can easily be conjectured. It was
in reality threefold. The first purpose was to instruct the
dauphin in matters essential to the good government of
France. The second purpose was to enlighten Louis XIV,
who was beginning, after a reign of more than thirty years,
to have misgivings as to the success of his government and
the prosperity of his kingdom. And another object was to
try to find, in an enumeration of the people, a fiscal instru-
ment the lack of which had been sadly felt in 1694 and 1695,
when Pontchartrain had wanted to try to establish a new
poll-tax {impot de capitation).*
The contents of the M6moires can be divided into two
parts, the purely descriptive part and the statistical part.
But the second is more important than the first. It is by
figures, first of all, that Louis could be enlightened as to the
fatal results of his incessant wars and of the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, and that the dauphin could also be in-
structed. This was especially true as regards population.
Population, then, was one of the dominant preoccupations
of the authors of the questionnaire addressed to the intendants
toward the end of 1697. This, in effect, is what we find in
the questionnaire :'\ "Number of towns; number of men,
about, in each; number of villages and hamlets; total of
eonnaitre d fond cette monarchie, — Extrait des memoires dressSs par les intendants du
royaume par ordre du roi Louis XIV h la soUidtation de Mgr. le due de Bourgoyne.
* Very interesting details relating to the enumerations which were attempted on
the occasion of this tax can be found in the excellent study of the Capitation dans
des pays de taiUe personelle by Georges Larde (Paris, 1906), see pp. 86-45 and
209-213.
t We possess two manuscript copies of the text of this questionnaire. See de
Boislile, Mimoire de la GenSralitS de Paris, p. 3, No. 1.
252 MEMORIAL VOLUME
parishes and of souls in each. Consult the old registers to
see if the people were more numerous formerly than today;
causes of the decrease; if there were Huguenots and how
many of them have gone away." And this is how Fenelon
expressed himself in his Directions pour la conscience d'un
roi:* "It is not enough to know the past; it is necessary to
know the present. Do you know the number of men that
compose your nation: how many men, how many women,
how many laborers, how many artisans, how many mechan-
ics (praticiens), how many tradesmen, how many priests
and monks, how many nobles and soldiers? What would
one say of a shepherd who did not know the number of his
flock? It is as easy for a king to know the number of his
people. He has only to wish to know."
How was this capital document of French statistics of
the seventeenth century prepared?
The data which we find there were brought together by
the cooperation of all the departments of administration
which then existed, the supreme head of which, in each prov-
ince, was the intendant.
The intendant was in his province, in all matters of public
policy, justice and finance, the word policy (police) being
taken in its broadest sense, the holder of all authority. He
was, as they used to call him, "I'homme du roi."t He was
also, it is necessary to add, the man of the contrSleur geniral
des Finances, who was, next to the king, the real ruler of
France. It was to him alone that the contr61eur applied to
get all the information and all the figures that he needed.
And in turn the intendant applied to the many agents under
his orders, to no one of whom, moreover, was especially
assigned the task of enumeration. So that those who have
most thoroughly studied the administrative organization
of the French monarchy have never failed to pay their
* See Article 1, § 9.
t On the origin and on the great rdle played by the intendants of the prov-
inces or gSrUraliUs see the substantial pages devoted to them by Brissaud.
Histoire G&nirale du Droit Frangais Public et Privi, Vol. I, pp. 844-850.
FRANCE 253
respects to the service which the intendants rendered to the
science of statistics. "The principal sources for statistical
studies of France," writes M. Ardascheff,* "before the Revo-
lution, are to be sought in the archives of the intendants de
'province. The intendants have rendered considerable serv-
ice in the work of statistics." That is quite true. But the
learned Russian professor goes so far as to declare "that
they were, in France, the real founders of this science":
in which he is mistaken, for he simply forgets Bodin and de
Montchretien, Sully and Colbert, not to speak of F6nelon
and Vauban.f By the nature and universality of his func-
tions, the intendant lived in the midst of numbers. Head of
the departments of taxation and finance, first in authority
over the raising and maintenance of the military forces,
over public works, agriculture, industry and commerce, over
religious ceremonies and public attendance, he could not
accomplish a single act without making statistics, gathering
them together and using them as data. It is through him
that in the eighteenth century, statistics of population,
economic statistics and financial statistics came together.
Among the collaborators of the intendant in the field of
statistics one of the administrative agents of the time de-
serves special mention, we mean the chief of the parish, the
curate.l The cure holds a great place in the history of
statistics under the ancient regime. The ordinance of Vil-
lers-Cotterets had made him a veritable officer of the civil
state. In this capacity he had to draw up a summary of
marriages, births and deaths. It was moreover his duty to
publish and, as it were, promidgate the acts of the authorities
by reading them from the pulpit. Finally, he was often
entrusted with the carrying out, in his parish, of the detailed
* See Les Intendants de Province sous Louis XVI, by Paul Ardascheflf, Professor of
the University of Kiev, tr. by Jousserandot, 1909, pp. 383-385.
t See, in particular, on the part played by Vauban, in the preparation of the
Tn&moire de I'Intendant de la g&niralitS de Paris, de Boislile, Introduction au Mimoire
de la GenSralitS de Paris, pp. IV and V.
J On the administrative functions of the cur^s see Brissaud, Histoire Q6nkale du
Droit Fransais Public et Privi, Vol. I, pp. 861 flE.
254 MEMORIAL VOLUME
enumerations necessitated by the imposing of certain taxes.
Thus, for example, by two circulars of October 31 and No-
vember 26, 1694, relative to "I'etahlissement proposS d'une
capitation," the controleur giniral Pontchartrain requested
the intendants to ask the cures for " le dHail des paroisses de
leur generaliU." And the intendant of Paris complied with
this request by addressing to the curSs of his gSnSralite a
scheme of enumeration, the framework of which included no
less than 16 columns corresponding to 16 differ ent numerical
data bearing upon persons, taxes and incomes.* No doubt
the moral authority of the curi was counted on to insure the
accuracy of the enumeration.f
The remaining consideration is, what is the value of the
figures which we find in the Mimoires of 1698?
Their quality varies widely. It is seldom good and often
bad. They are most often the result of more or less sound
estimates rather than of exact proofs. And that is due to
causes which persist to the end of the eighteenth century —
to the habitual mediocrity of the subordinate oflScers of
French administration in this period, and to the particular
difficulties then presented by most of the enumerations, in
consequence of the insufficient means of communication,
especially in winter, and also because of the resistance, fre-
quent and difficult to overcome, which the people made to
all the investigations of authorized officials.
The figures are defective not only in point of quality, but
in uniformity. Uniformity, it would seem, ought to have
been insured by the unity of the program outlined by the
due de Beauvillier. But there was none. The program was
far from being understood and carried out in the same way
by all the intendants. Some give the number of inhabi-
tants; others give only the number of households. Among
the first, some give the number of all the inhabitants!
* See de Boislile, M&moire de la GenSralitS de Paris, pp. 5S2-6S3.
t This authority was not always efficacious. We are told that sometimes when
the cui£ wished to read at the parochial mass (au prone) the instructions addressed
to him by the intendant, most of the parishioners left the church. See de Boislile,
Nouvelle iditum des m&moires de Saint-Simon, Vol. IL P- 461.
FRANCE 255
while others exclude certain classes of peoples. Among the
second, some count all the households, others count only
the taxable households, and some take the figures from the
lists of the Capitation of 1695. And this doubtless explains
the severity with which the Mimoires were judged, even by
contemporaries, notably by the Count de Boulainvilliers.*
This severity is perhaps "excessive" as Levasseurf thinks,
but it is certainly merited in our opinion, at least in great
measure.
The Mhnoires, according to the custom of the times in the
matter of official documents, remained in manuscript and
secret. However, under the increasing pressure of opinion,
the mystery which was supposed to surround them was often
penetrated. Numerous copies were made. Of the mSmoire
of the gSniralitS of Paris, M. de Boislile has counted 27 manu-
scripts and he thinks there were more. How many readers
does that figure indicate? It is impossible to say. But
the number was certainly very high. Official statistics then
had all the attraction of forbidden fruit. And this explains,
no doubt, the fascination which statistics had for certain
spirits, for example. Abbe de Dangeau, whom Boislile, not
without some exaggeration, has characterized as the "pre-
* Speaking of the Mimoire of the ggn£ralit£ of Paris, Boulainvilliers says: "Its
tedious prolixity, its useless and continual digressions would have disgusted me for-
ever with reading such things, if I had not reflected that from this chaos and others
like it it was not impossible to extract some knowledge which, digested in another
way, might be incomparably useful not only to me and my associates but to the
public." He reproaches the intendant of Bouen, "for not having entered into the
details of families, of lands, of taxes, for having neglected to make known various
imposts (impositions diverses), for having confined himself to talking about the
poverty of the people." "The pitiful author of this m&moire," he says, of the
mSmoire of Poitou, " cannot be acquitted of many serious faults." And as for the
mSmoire of Bordeaux, "that," he says, "is really one of the most imperfect that
have been drawn up in the provinces."
The Abb6 de Saint-Pierre, more moderate and just than Boulainvilliers, confined
himself to seeking for the means " of having better m4moires des intendances than
those which were sent to the court by the intendants in 1698 and 1699." — See
MSmoire sur le Gouvernement InterieuT de I'Etat, Oeuvres completes de 1733, Vol. VII,
p. 259.
t See La Population Frangaise, Vol. I, p. 202.
256 MEMORIAL VOLUME
curseur de la Statistique,"* but who was at least the most
remarkable amateur of his time, if one judges by the 224
manuscripts of his in our Biblioth^que Nationale.^ And the
publicity given to the figures by the manuscripts which
were passed from hand to hand was nothing to what they
received, in 1707, 1709, and 1727, from certain books, such
as La Dime Royale (The Royal Tithes) of Vauban, Le dinom-
brement de la France par geniralitis, Elections, paroisses, et
feux by Saugrain, I'Etat de la France by Count de Boulain-
villiers, in spite of the severe condemnations pronounced
against some of them and in spite of the necessity that the
authors were under of having them printed secretly or
abroad.l
Demographic Statistics
As in oiu: time, but for different reasons, the question
of population was, during the eighteenth century, one of
the dominant objects of interest of the public authorities
and of the enlightened spirits which at that time shaped
opinion.
Much is written today about the causes of the decline of
the birth rate and the means of remedying it. Even more
perhaps was written in the eighteenth century on the ques-
tion of determining what was the figure for the population of
France. Some put it high, others put it low; some thought
it to be increasing, others thought it to be diminishing. §
The public authorities were interested in the population,
its status and movement, with the sole purpose of obtaining
larger and larger military and fiscal resources. The writers
sought in the increase or decline of the number of inhabitants
the touchstone of the prosperity of France, and consequently,
* See de Boislile, La Gfydraliti de Paris, Introd., p. LVII.
t See Biblioihkgue Naiionah (Manuscrits franQais, Vols. 22593-22817).
i Boulainvilliers was printed in London and Vauban was printed secretly at
Rouen.
§ Among them: Votius attributed to France 15,000,000 inhabitants, the Marquis
de Mirabeau in I' Ami des Homines or Trail6 de la Population put the figure at
18,000,000, and Montesquieu reduced it to 14,000,000, at the same time declaring
that France could support 50,000,000. — See Oeuwes inedits. Vol. I, p. 180.
FRANCE 257
that of the virtues and vices of the royal administration and
of the absolute monarchy itself, which many, as early as the
middle of the eighteenth century, had already ceased to re-
gard as eternal and irrefragable.
Both parties needed statistics to satisfy their legitimate
curiosity. How were they to be arrived at?
Not, any more than for the preceding centuries, by general
enumerations applied to the entire population counted head
by head. Such enumerations were not made until the
nineteenth century. Until the end, the administration of
the ancient regime, which concealed so much weakness
under the appearance of strength lent to it by the absolute
power of the king, felt itself powerless to undertake them.
Of the 32 intendants, authors of the MSmoires, twelve con-
fined themselves to counting the popidation by a census of
households, fifteen borrowed their figures from the tax
registers and from the Capitation of 1695, four or five, notably
those of Paris and Languedoc, dared to try direct enumera-
tion, head by head. And the most remarkable of the in-
tendants of the eighteenth century, de la Michodi^re, who
hides under the name of Messance, and de Montyon, who
hides under the name of Moheau, men who left justly cele-
brated writings on the subject of population,* are unani-
* The title of Messance 's book is Recherches sur la population dea gMraliUs
d'Auvergne, de Lyon, de Rouen, et de guelques provinces el villes du royaume avec des
Tiflexions sur la valeur du hied tant en France qu'en Angleterre de 167i ct 176i. It is
dated 1766 and was written at the beginning of 1765. The name of Messance is
followed by the title: receveur des taiUes. Barou Grimm, one of the best informed
men of his time, presents Messance to us as the secretary and proxy (jwlte-nom)
of the intendant Michodifere. "This opinion is not supported by proofs," says
Levasseur {La Population Franqaise, Vol. I, p. 215). True, but it is so likely that
one caimot hesitate to admit it.
The book signed "Moheau" has a more general scope than that of Messance; it
is entitled: Recherches et considerations sur la population de la France; it is dated
1778, but to judge from the date of the epistle to the king, it was written in 1774.
We have set forth elsewhere the various reasons which warrant us in ascribing the
work to M. de Montyon (La SocOU de Statistique de Paris, p. XXIII, and, to the
same effect, M. Ardaschefl, Les Intendants de Province sous Louis XVI, p. 178).
And we cannot help clinging to our opinion in spite of serious objections which have
been raised by our learned colleague M. Ren6 Gounard in the Notice which he put
at the beginning of the new edition (Paris, 1912) of the book signed "Moheau."
IS
258 MEMORIAL VOLUME
mous in regarding direct enumeration as an enterprise so
diflScult and expensive that it seemed to them unreasonable
to try it. Necker expressed the same thought in 1784,*
and also the Chevalier des Pommelles, in his Tableau de la
Population de toutes les Provinces de France^ published in
1789. "There does not exist and there never has existed
any general enumeration of the kingdom," says the Chevalier
des Pommelles (p, 45), summing up very well what de la
Mochodiere, de Montyon and Necker had said before him.
"An enumeration of individuals which, at first glance, seems
such an easy thing, not only would be expensive, but, when
one considers it, presents so many difl&culties in carrying it
out that one must doubt even the possibility, above all the
carrying out of such an operation. The people have so
many prejudices against such an enumeration that in
1786 the provincial Assembly of Auch was obliged to
stop it in the province on account of the disturbance it
caused. It will take a long time to inspire enough confi-
dence in the people to cure them of their prejudices in this
respect."
Such was the opinion of men in the best position to know
the machinery of French administration in the eighteenth
century and to appreciate the value of the means at its
disposal to make general enumerations.J Necker and des
Pommelles were no more influenced than the intendants
by the sharp remark of Saint-Simon who speaks, with his
acrimonious livehness, "of those impious enumerations
which have always outraged the Creator and drawn the
weight of His hand on those who have had them made and
* See De I' Administration des Finances de la France, Vol. 1, pp. 202-221.
t The book by the Chevalier des Pommelles, lieutenant-colonel of the fifth regi-
ment, d'Mat-major (Paris, 1784) is twofold. It includes, 1st, a Mknoire sur ha
Milices, 2d, a Tableau de la poj/ulation de toutes les provinces de France et de la pro-
portion sous tous les rapports des naissances, des marts and des mariages, depuis dix ans,
d^apris les registers de chaque g&rUralM.
% Is it true, as we are told, apropos of the M&moire de la g&n6ralitS de Paris, pub-
lished by Boislile, that the military was ordered to make a complete enumeration of
the g^^ralite, house by house, with the names of the inhabitants, men, women and
children? We doubt it.
FRANCE 259
almost always earned startling punishments."* They simply
judged as men accustomed to live in contact with reality
and practical necessity.
If F^nelon could say that it was as easy for a king to know
the number of his subjects as for a shepherd to know the
number of his flock, if Vauban could propose a system by
which could be completed "without confusion and with ease,
in twice tWenty-four hours, all the enumerations which it
might please the king to make of his people"! it was because
these great and generous spirits, inspired above all by their
love of public welfare, were not afraid to demand in their
day something that could not be realized until a century
later.
But if French administration in the eighteenth century did
not dare approach a poll enumeration of the population of
the entire kingdom, it frequently made one limited either
to several selected localities or to a definite category of
persons. By combining the results thus obtained with those
of certain other enumerations, it succeeded in getting the
figure for the total population of France with that degree of
accuracy which satisfied de Montyon when he wrote: "The
Statesman who wishes to know the strength of the population
of a country needs only the approximate figure,"J and he
arrives at it, he adds, by "computing from the facts which
have a constant necessary relation with the population."
The particular facts and materials available for use in
calculating the figure for the total population were numerous
enough. De Montyon cites eight of them, births, marriages,
deaths, the consumption of certain products {consommations),
parishes, houses, § households, the quotas of capitation. One
* See the new edition of the M&moires by de Boislile, Vol. XX, pp. 167 and 574.
t La Dime Royale {petite edit. Gaillaumin), pp. 177-178.
X Recherches et considerations svr la 'population, (edit. 1778), p. 23.
§ One may find an attempt to calculate the population of Fans, on the basis of
the figures for the annual consumption of coin and the number of houses, in I'Easai
sur les Monnaies by Dupre de Saint-Maur, master of accounts, economist, academi-
cian, and father of the intendant de Guienne who was one of the great intendants of
the eighteenth century. See p. 59 ff.
260 MEMORIAL VOLUME
may add the Easter communions. But from the middle
of the eighteenth century it was commonly agreed to adopt
"the least uncertain index," as Necker calls it, "that which
is supplied by the number of births." "Since births,"
says de Montyon, "are the product of population, and since
in a certain period, they renew the mass of it, then they have
such a necessary relation to it that they can be taken as the
measure of it."
How was this measure determined? How in the eight-
eenth century was the population of France counted? By a
method which the intendants de la Michodiere (Messance)
and de Montyon (Moheau), and Necker and des Pommelles
have described for us with great precision.
Suppose an intendant wished to know the figure for the
population of his g^niraliU. He began by selecting a certain
number of parishes, taking care to group districts of different
character, "so that different conditions may be combined
and balance each other (forment compensation),"* and in
those districts made a poll enumeration. In each of the
parishes thus enumeratedf the total number of inhabitants
was compared with the mean number of births for the six
preceding years. The comparison was made by dividing
the first by the second. The resulting quotient was very
variable, no doubt according to locality, because it swung
between the extreme limits of 21 and 32 inhabitants to one
birth, but it was reduced to an average figure carefully cal-
culated. This average figure was applied to every gSnSralitS.
Suppose it was 25 inhabitants to a birth; J they multiplied
by 25 the mean annual number of births in every gSnSralitS
* See de Montyon (Moheau), Recherches et considSraiions, pp. 32-46.
t The number of parishes in which a poll enumeration was made was fixed arbi-
trarily by the intendant. The glnlraliUpi Rouen comprised 1,885 parishes in 1762,
a year when they were trying to determine its total population. A poll enumeration
was made in 105 parishes. In 1757, in the Election of Saint-Flour (Province of Au-
vergne), the number of parishes polled {tete par tete) was 17 out of 148.
i That was the expression at that time of what we now call the birth rate (nataliii)
and which we express by saying that there are so many births to 100,000 or 10,000
inhabitants. Twenty-five inhabitants to one birth gave a birth rate of 40 to 1000
inhabitants.
FRANCE 261
and fancied that they had the figure for its total popu-
lation.
From the population of a giniraliti to that of France was
only a step. They took it in two ways. The simplest con-
sisted in adding the figures obtained in all the gineralitis.
However, that is not the method that was usually followed.
They preferred to calculate and adopt for the whole of France
a mean ratio of the number of births to the number of in-
habitants, and then multiply the total number of births in
France by the figure expressing this ratio. It is thus that
de Montyon,* multiplying 928,918 births, the average
figure for the five years, 1769 to 1773, by 25^, attributed to
France "about 23,500,000 or 24,000,000 inhabitants" in
1774, and that Necker.f multiplying 963,207 births, the
average figure for the five years, 1776 to 1780, by 24f , ar-
rived, for the year 1781, at the figure of 24,802,500 individuals.
The Chevalier des Pommelles, by analogous calculations,
arrives at a slightly higher figure. "I have gone over the
whole kingdom," he says; "I have had the registers of all
the intendances drawn oflf; I have made or verified all the
calculations myself; after that," he adds, not without a
certain naive pretentiousness, "I believe I can be sure that,
in the actual state of things, the estimate of 25,065,883 is
the most certain that can be made." J
When it was decided, in the eighteenth century, to make a
poll count of the inhabitants of a certain number § of parishes,
of very different types and of very unequal importance, the
opportunity was usually taken advantage of to make rather
detailed enumerations. To th^se enumerations we owe most
interesting numerical data on the composition of the French
population in the eighteenth century, both from the point
* See de Montyon (Moheau), loc. eit. pp. 64-70.
t See Necker, loc. eit. Vol. I, p. 207 and pp. 222-320, where Necker gives the
figures for the population, imposts, area of each gMraliU, of Corsica and the col-
onies.
J See des Pommelles, loc. dt. p. 47.
§ This number did not reach quite 6 per cent, of the total number of parishes in
the gfnh'aliU of Rouen, but it exceeded 13 per cent, in the gMraliU of Auvergne.
262 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of view of sex and family relations {Hat-dvil) and from the
point of view of age, social categories and professions,*
which we find either in the manuscript collections of our
Archives and our Bibliothtque Nationale, or in the works of
contemporaries, Vauban and Saugrain, the Abbe d'Expilly,
of the intendants de la Michodiere and de Montyon, of the
contrdleur genSral Necker, of the Chevalier des Pommelles,
and of the last chief of the Bureau de la balance du commerce,
under the monarchy, Arnould, or, finally, in the first docu-
ments published in 1835 and in 1837 by the Bureau de la
Statistique generale de la France.
The eighteenth century, it is true, based the enumeration
of the total population on the enumeration of the acts of
marriage, birth and death. So it is not surprising that it
tried to strengthen the guaranties of accuracy of the first
and to improve constantly the conditions of the second.
The sixteenth century had seen the beginning of com-
pulsory registration of the actes de Vetat-dvil (birth, death,
etc.). The seventeenth century had completed the ordi-
nances of 1539 and 1579 by imposing, in the ordinance of
1667 on procedure, the keeping of these registers in dupli-
cate. In spite of that the statistical use of them was
quite exceptional. That demanded special measures like
that which Colbert took for examining the registers of the
parishes of Paris from 1670 on. Statistical utilization be-
came possible beginning with the declaration of April 9,
1736, and the circular of Terray, August 14, 1772.
The declaration of 1736 prescribed: 1st, that curates,
vicars, parish priests (desservants) , the superiors of the
chapters of religious orders or the administrators of the
*We are informed, notably, of the number of males and females (mdles and
femelles were the expressions used then), of the number of individuals below and
above 14 years, of the number of bachelors, married men and widowers, of the
number of nobles, ecclesiastics, officials, domestics, beggars. These five categories
of persons were the objects of very minute researches and studies. See on this sub-
ject the details, fairly numerous but sometimes open to suspicion, given by Moreau
de Jonnfis, Etat Economique el Social de la France de 1589 & 1715, pp. Sff-ST, 100,
267-278. On the niunber of fiscal agents and employees, see Necker, loc. eit. Vol. I,
pp. 193, 201.
FRANCE S63
hospices, deposit every year at the office of the baihwick*
the dupUcate of their registers of baptisms, marriages and
burials; 2d, that the poUce officers keep registers of the
deaths of persons to whom ecclesiastical burial should be
refused.
The circular addressed by the Abb6 Terray to the in-
tendants in his capacity as contrdleur giniral, is of too great
importance for us not to cite the text itself, at least in part.
"Monsieur I'intendant, it is very important for the adminis-
tration to know exactly the state of the population of the
kingdom, and this knowledge will be no less useful to each
one of MM. les intendants des provinces. I beg you, conse-
quently, to have made each year an exact resum6 of the
population of your gSnSraliU conforming to the model list
which you will find herewith. It is not an enumeration by
persons, dwellings (mSnages) or households that I ask of you,
that enumeration, although easy, f would demand too much
time and trouble to be renewed each year; what I ask is that
you have sent to you each year by the clerks of the royal
jurisdictions a resume of births, marriages, deaths in all
parishes, chapters, regular or secular order, hospices or other
churches which may be authorized to celebrate marriages,
administer baptisms or make interments, to which you will
cause to be added the persons of both sexes who shall have
entered religious orders and who shall have died in the
monasteries, convents and nunneries which keep records
of new members and deaths. The lists which I ask of you
ought to contain eight columns. . . .
"You will finish this list by a recapitxilation for each dis-
trict (Slecition) and you will add a general recapitulation for
your department.^ ... I beg you to apply yourself
from this time on (before 1772) to this work and to begin it
with the years 1770 and 1771, which will be distinguished
* The bailiwick (bailliage) was a judiciary district. There were 829 of them in
the eighteenth century.
t It will be noted that the Abb6 Terray speaks almost as Vauban does about the
ease of general enumerations.
I The word dipartement was already used as a synonym of glniraliii.
264 MEMORIAL VOLUME
by separate lists. . . . The more utility the work pre-
sents, the more zeal and accuracy I hope you will bring to it-
It is moreover easy to do. . . . It is necessary to see
to it that the clerks distinguish carefuUy, under the heads of
births and deaths, the numbers of both sexes. This list>
drawn up for the whole kingdom, will make it possible to
know in a few years whether there are born or die more males
than females and in what proportion. ... I beg you
kindly to take all necessary measures to prevent, if possible,
any error from slipping into this work, which I earnestly
commend to your usual zeal for all that concerns the good of
the service."
It is not surprising to learn that the noble appeals ad-
dressed by Terray to the zeal of his collaborators were not
always heeded and that he found himself obliged to repeat
them several times in the course of the year 1773. But
that does not at all detract from the great merit of the
author of the circular of 1772. Nor is his merit any more
diminished by the fact that the registers ordered by Terray
were kept by the Catholic clergy, that they could serve at
that time only for Catholics, and that it was only beginning
with 1787 that a lay Mai-civil was granted to protestants.
So we owe to Terray the organization of the permanent
and regular enumeration of the actes de VEtat-Civil in France.
And this organization, which has maintained its original
lines up to the beginning of the twentieth century, it is.
important to note, is characterized essentially by the ab-
sence of administrative utility. The regular statistics of
Vetat-civil date, in France, from 1772, and not as has been
said incorrectly "from the creation of the first service de
Statistique gSnSrale, that is to say from the last year of the
eighteenth century."* Statisticians ought to have it in
their hearts to do justice to Terray in this regard,! the more
*See Statiiiigue Internationale du Mouvement de la Population d'apris lea Regiglers
de VEtat-CivU, published by the Direction de la Statistique ghUrale de la France, 1907,
p. L
tLevasseur, whose justice equalled his knowledge, had the honor to be the first to.
do justice to Terray (See La Population Franfaise, Vol. I, p. 250), quoting the com-
FRANCE 265
SO because the historians, often too severe on him, have for
the most part remembered him only as an unscrupulous
administrator, offering to the monarchy, to reestablish its
damaged finances, expedients of questionable morality.*
The First Tables of Mortality
To the great progress made by the statistics of the actes
de I'etat civil it is proper to append the establishment of the
first tables of mortality, those tables which Cournot calls
"the most diflficult work and, as it were, the masterpiece of
statistics. "
The first was established, at the request of the contrdleur
gSnSral de BouUongne, by Deparcieux and published in 1746
in his Essai sur les probabilitSs de la durie de la vie humaine,
which was approved by the AeadSmie des Sciences after a
favorable report by NicoUe and Buffon. The materials for
it were furnished by 9,320 deaths which took place in two
tontines created in 1689 and 1696: the last deaths occurred
in 1742.
The second was established by Dupr6 de Saint-Maur with
the help of observations drawn from the registers of deaths
prior to 1749 in twelve parishes in the environs of Paris and
three parishes in Paris (Saint-Andr6, Saint Hippolyte and
Saint-Nicolas). It was published by Buffon in 1767, inhis ittide
sur Vhomme et spScialement sur les prpbabilitSs de la durie de
la vie.\ "It is the only one, " says Buffon, after having cited
some others published in England and Holland, "on which
one can establish the probabilities of the life of men in gen-
eral with some certainty," thanks to the bringing together
in the same calculation of city parishes and country par-
ishes.
plete text of the circular of 1772. We allow ourselves to rebuke him a little for
one thing. The circular of 1772 appears to him "important for the history of
population in France"; one ought rather to say important for the history of statis-
tics.
*Note, however, the impartiality of the judgment passed by M. Marcel Marion on
the financial work of Terray. (See Histoire finamiiiTe de la France depuia 1716,
Vol. I, pp. 248-279.)
fSee Oeuvres Completes, idit. de la Soeitli bibliophile. Vol. IV, pp. 115-126.
266 MEMORIAL VOLUME
A third is to be found in Monty on (Moheau).* The
author has compiled it from the deaths in the three parishes
of Paris and the twelve parishes in the country which had
been used by Dupr6 de Saint-Maur, to which he has added
the deaths in eight parishes of the gSnSralitS of Rouen, eight
in the isle of Re and eleven in different provinces, in all
50,567 deaths. But he takes care to announce that "his
object is less to establish the duration of life than the times
and periods that are most mortal. " This explains, without
doubt, why his table has not been used by those who need to
know the probable duration of human life.
There is, finally, a fourth table of mortality, that of Duvill-
ard, former attache of the Controle gSnSral under Turgot,
and of the ministry of the interior, in 1805, when he had
charge of the statistics of population. The author does not
say with enough precision what materials he used. All we
know is that his table of mortality! was composed in 1798
and that it was compiled from 101,542 deaths drawn from
the registers prior to the Revolution.
After the population it is the economic and financial facts
which are the object, in the period which we are studying,
of enumerations continuously extended and improved.
Economic Statistics
One has difficulty in getting an idea of the prodigious
extension in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of
economic statistics. It is, indeed, the period in which, after
having fully triumphed in the political field and won absolute
power there, the French monarchy gives free rein to its
spirit of state initiative {esprit Hatiste), when it meddles,
most often for fiscal reasons but also under the most varied
pretexts, in the domain of industry, agriculture and com-
*Recherches et amMkations (6dit. 1778), pp. 155-228.
fit was published in 1806, in a memoire presented to the AcaMmie des Sciences
in 1798 and entitled: Analyse et tableaux de V influence de la petite v&role sur la mor-
tality a chaque dge et de ceUe qu'un prSseroatif tel que la vaccine peut avoir sur la
population et la longimlS,
FRANCE 267
merce. It is the period when nobody in France may work,
choose and practise any profession whatsoever without the
permit of the king.* It is the time when the king, feeling
some scruples on the subject of applying the tithes (dixieme)
of 1710 to the benefit of the nobles and the clergy, consulted
the Sorbonne and received, as Saint-Simon says, the follow-
ing response: "that all the wealth of the French was the
personal property of the king, and that when he took it he
took only what belonged to him." Now, we know that
excess of regulation by public authority imphes at once as a
condition and a consequence an enforced multiphcation of
enumerations.
What might lead us to believe that in the seventeenth
century and the eighteenth, statistics were less highly devel-
oped than in reality they were later, is that they were still
badly organized, that the instruments specially devoted to it
were defective and that the preservation of documents was
imperfectly assured. But the moment approaches when we
are to see appear a certain specialization in the departments
of service that have charge of preparing them. And it is
precisely in the domain of economic statistics that we are
about to observe this phenomenon.
From the middle of the sixteenth century the registers of
customs (jdouane) have allowed us to know approximately
the amount of our imports. We have the proof of it in a
manuscript the date of which lies between 1551 and 1556t
and which gives us the value of the different imports which
France received from Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Italy,
Germany, England.
We know that the registers of the customs were utilized
by Sully to evaluate the annual product of an export tax
(droit de sortie) of 15 sous (sols) per bale of merchandise
exported, which an edict of Henry IV had established in
*See on the statistics of corporations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des Corporations de MMiers, pp. 446 and 656.
t See on this manuscript Levasseur, Histoire des Classes Ouvrieres avant 1789, id
edit.. Vol. II, pp. 49 and 50.
268 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1603.* Colbert often had recourse to it in order to get in-
formation on the movement of importations.
But it is his successor Pontchartrain, aided by d'Aguesseau
who was especially in charge of the direction of Commerce,
who first asked, in 1693,t that detailed tables of importation
and exportation be drawn up. And the definitive confirma-
tion of this measure was the creation, by an order of the
Conseil du roi on April 18, 1713, of a Bureau appointed to
collect the elements necessary to "la balance du commerce,"
directed at first by de Grandval, formerly fermier gSnSral,
and placed until 1785 under the authority of the fermiers
gSnSraux.X That is the first branch of French public service
in which one can see a department especially devoted to
statistics. It seems to have functioned satisfactorily. To it
we owe the possession, year by year since 1716, of the statis-
tics of the foreign trade of France. § To these detailed annual
tables were added, in 1756, general r6sum6s. Necker, to
whom the creation of this Bureau has been incorrectly at-
tributed, II did nothing more than reorganize it in 1781, giving
it oflScially the name, "Bureau de la balance du Commerce."
We find an allusion to this reorganization in V Administration
des finances de la France (Vol. II, p. 127). We find there also
very instructive observations on the "usual inaccuracy of the
balances de Commerce. " According to Necker this inaccuracy
had two causes : in the first place, the impossibility of record-
* See Amould, De la balance du Commerce et des relations commerdales extSrieures
de la France dans Unites les ■parties du globe avec la fxdeur de ses importations et exporta-
tions progressives depuis 1716jusqu'en 1788, Vol. II, p. 118; and de Natalis Rondot,
Dictionnaire du Commerce — Guillaumin, 1859, under the words: Commission des
fxdeurs en douane.
t It is curious to note that in this same year, 1693, began the annual communica-
tion of tables of the customs to the English Parliament.
t See Levasseur, Bistmre du Commerce de la France, Vol. I, p. 509, and Pallain,
Les Dovxmes Franfaises, new edit. 1913, Vol. II, pp. 313 £E.
§ It was in 1716 that the publication of the annual resumes was decided on. An
order of the Conseil, February 29, 1716, appropriated for this work the sum of
10,000 livres. The declaration of the quantities was furnished by the traders.
The valuations were given by the Chambres de Commerce.
II Statistique GSnSrale de la France, Historique et travaux de la fin du XVIIIirtle
tiide A la fin du XlXime, p. 6.
FRANCE 269
ing on the registers of the fiscal agents "the secret operations
carried on in contraband which are sometimes so extended
that they are enough to change entirely the first ideas that
one might have conceived of the credit or debit of the trade of
a nation" (p. 117) ; in the second place, the extreme imperfec-
tion of valuing in money, "as it is ordinarily done, " the ex-
ports and imports of a kingdom (p. 119).*
As it was organized by Necker, the Bureau de la balance
du Commerce lasted until 1792. It was then replaced {In-
structions of January 17, 1792) by the "Bureau des archives
du Commerce, "f This was in reality only a change of name,
to judge by a circular of January 17, 1792, which explained
very clearly the mission of what pretended to be a new bureau.
Its activity is shown in a report which Roland, Minister of
Interior, presented to the Convention, at the end of 1792, on
the imports and exports of France during the first half of the
year. But it ceased completely from that date, and no official
statistics of the foreign trade of France seem to have been set
down for the years 1793, 1794, 1795 and 1796. The political
events of that time sufficiently explain this interruption.
The annual figure for the imports and exports is found
again from 1797 on. But we cannot accept without serious
reservations either the figures for the years 1797 to 1801,
the period when, thanks to Chaptal who had become Minis-
* The critical observations of Necker are fully confirmed by the learned researches
of M. Masson into the customs statistics drawn up by the Chambre de Commerce of
Marseilles apropos the commerce of the Levant, from 1660 to 1661, from 1661 to
1715 and from 1715 to 1778. See, first, Histoire du Commerce frangaia dans le
Levant au XVIIime siicle. Appendix pp. XIII-XXV; second, Histoire du Commerce
Jrangais dans le Levant au XVIIIime siicle, pp. 407-409 and 410-635.
t The Bureau des archives formed part of a Bureau Central de V Administration du
Cofmtnerce the creation of which was ordered by the Legislative and which was
connected with the Ministry of the Interior. The instructions of January 17, 1792,
are of very great interest. They deserve to be quoted in their entirety. But for
want of space we shall be content to refer to the work of M. Fallain', he. dt. pp.
316-319 where the complete text may be found. The reports of Roland and later
those of Chaptal, prepared with the help of lists drawn up by the Bureau des ar-
chives, were published only under exceptional circumstances. These lists, the ele-
ments of which, from 1792 on, were furnished by the customs service, remained
locked up in the boxes of the Ministry of the Interior. They were brought to light
by the Bureau de la Statistique gSnSrale in its first volume published in 1838.
270 MEMORIAL VOLUME ^
ter of Interior November 6, 1800, the regular publication of
the statistics for foreign trade was resumed, or those for the
years 1811 to 1814 for which the official figures are lacking
and are replaced by figures borrowed from a table published
in August, 1830, by Cesar Moreau, President of the SociStS
Frangaise de Statistique Universelle in the Bulletin of that
Society.
Like all official documents, the documents of customs
statistics were kept secret up to 1789. We have them,
however, and with sufficient guaranties of authenticity, for
the years 1716 to 1787. They were published complete: 1st,
in 1795, by Arnould, in his book. La Balance du Commerce;
2d, in 1830, by Cesar Moreau, who says that he found them
in a "manuscript table made for the instruction of the king
by M. Trudaine de Montigny, of all the magistrates of the
Conseil the most distinguished for vision, talent and accu-
racy"; 3d, in 1838, by the Ministry of Commerce in the docu-
ment entitled: Statistique de la France; Commerce extirieur.
The figures of Cesar Moreau are the same as those of
Arnould. Those of the Ministry of Commerce often differ
from them widely. With de Foville we believe that prefer-
ence should be given to those of Arnould. It is with them
that our learned and lamented colleague composed the
precious tables which he inserted in the Bulletin de Statis-
tique et de LSgislation ComparSe of the Ministry of Finance
(number for January, 1883, pp. 46-80).*
We ought to mention here, still apropos of economic
statistics, the creation, in 1782, under the Ministry of Cal-
onne, of the Comiti de l' Agriculture. This committee which
was the first embryo of our Ministry of Agriculture, was
very actively busy, from 1785 to 1787, in establishing a sort
of agricultural statistics of France. It ordered one of its
members, Dupont de Nemours, to present to it in 1786, "a
* The figures given by Necker in V Administration des Finances de la France (Vol.
II, pp. 130 ff.) and those which one finds in some manuscripts existing in the Ar-
chives Nationales differ also from those of Arnould. But that does not prevent
Levasseur from giving, like de Foville, preference to the latter. See Hisimre du
Commerce, Vol. I, p. 510.
» FRANCE 271
summary (apergu) of the value of the crops of the kingdom."
And it is from these works that Lavoisier, who was a memjber
of the Comity, with Dupont de Nemours, borrowed largely
for the great inventory of which we shall speak presiently.*
Financial Statistics
No special organization devoted to financial statistics
appeared in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The facts which constitute the subject matter of financial
statistics enumerate themselves as they are accomplished.
If one wishes to understand the burning curiosity with
which the data that financial statistics might furnish were
sought for and commented on, one must remember that all
the enlightened spirits of the time thought as Colbert did
when he said to Louis XIV in his great m6moire of 1663 on
financial afiPairs: "It is a constant and generally recognized
maxim in all the states of the world that finance is the most
important and most essential part. It is a matter which
enters into all affairs, both those that concern the internal
existence of the state and those that concern its external
growth and power, "f One must also remember that the
claims made before the States-General of 1614 by the Chan-
cellor and by the representative of the Clergy were main-
tained up to 1789. "Kings," declared the Chancellor,
"cannot without danger and risk make known the state and
strength of their finances which are the sinews and power of
their state." And as these words provoked some murmurs,
the representative of the Clergy came to the assistance of
the Chancellor, saying: "Finances are the sinew of the state.
But even as the sinews are hidden under the skin, so must
financial strength or weakness be kept secret. In ancient
times when the Holy of Holies was unveiled it was only the
High Priest who entered the Sanctuary, the others remained
outside. Finance is the manna enclosed in the golden ark."
* See on this Comity, Pigeonneau and de Foville, l' Administration de V Agriculture
au Contrdle girUral des Finances, 1786-1787, in -8°, 1882, and on the Apergu of
Dupont de Nemours, see pp. 140-148.
tSee Letlres, Instructions et Mimoires, Vol. II, p. 17.
272 MEMORIAL VOLUME
It is true that the celebrated Compte rendu au roi of Jan-
uary, 1781, was, by order of Louis XVI, offered to the public
and circulated to the extent of several thousand copies.*
But that was an exception. Necker himself, author of the
Compte rendu, was obliged three years later to have his great
work, V Administration des Finances de la France, printed
secretly, and there was a procureur gSnSral who denounced
that book before the Parlement of Brittany on the ground
"that it revealed the operations of the administration and
the secrets of the state."
We possess a sufficiently large number of statistical data
relating to the last two centuries of the French monarchy.
Much was published in the course of the eighteenth century
in forbidden works whose authors often found accomplices
among those who ought to have had them condemned.
Much also was published by the scholars of our time who
set themselves the task of bringing to light the rich collec-
tions of manuscript in our Archives Nationales.
Among the works of the eighteenth century we shall men-
tion only the principal ones :
First, Recherches et Consider ations sur les Finances de la
France depuis I'annSe 1596 jusqu'd Vannie 1721, by Veron de
Forbonnais, 1758. Two editions were published simultane-
ously, one dated at Basle in two volumes, quarto, the other
dated at Liege in six volumes, duodecimo. It is the edition
of Basle that we have before us. Forbonnais had already
written several memoires on finance, and a book entitled
EUments du Commerce, when he was called in 1756 to the
office of inspecteur gSnSral des Monnaies and became shortly
after the right arm of the Controleur giniral Silhouette. He
was in a position to get in touch with all the documents kept
by the administration of the controle gSnSral des Finances.
That is why, doubtless, he could give, year by year, from
1595 to 1721, the essential elements of the financial situation
of France with numerous tables to support them.
Second, Comptes-rendus de V administration des Finances du
* Six thousand, it is said.
FRANCE 273
royaume de France pendant les onze demises annSes du rhgne
de Henri IV, le regne de Louis XIII et 65 annSes de Louis
XIV, a posthumous work of M. Mallet, first Commis des
Finances under M. Desmaretz, 1708-1715, London, 1789,
quarto.
Third, Collection des comptes-rendus, pieces authentiques,
Stats et tableaux concernant les Finances de France depuis
1758 jusqu'en 1787 by Mathon de la Cour, Lausanne, 1788,
quarto. The state of French finance is set forth in this work
year by year. It seems that here is found the text itself of
the memoires and reports of the Controleurs gSnSraux.
These three works complete each other. They form a unit
of greatest interest from the twofold point of view of the
history of finance and of the history of French financial
statistics.
Among the numerous contemporary works which contain
the documents of financial statistics taken from the manu-
script collections of our national archives we shall mention
only the following:
First, La Correspondance des Controleurs gSnSraux des
finances avec les intendants de province 1683 a 1715, published
by de Boislile, quarto. Examination one by one of the
hundreds of pieces which make up this correspondence
reveals a priceless mine of documents which are of interest
not only for the history of financial statistics in particular
but for the history of statistics in general.
Second, Les Lettres, Instructions et MSmoires de Colbert by
Clement, Vols. I and II; Vol. II is entirely taken up with
the Affaires des Finances. One will notice there (pp. 771-
783) one of the annual resumes of the state of finance which
Colbert presented to Louis XIV, that of the year 1680, at
the end of which one may read the table of receipts and
expenses from 1662 to 1680.
But a double question arises. What is, precisely, the
character of the figures contained in these two categories of
works and what is the value of them?
To the first one can answer that the figures are, for the
19
274 MEMORIAL VOLUME
most part, official figures; by that we mean that they are
almost always taken from documents which the department
of Finance drew up in conformity with the rules which it
had to observe and without the least concern for publicity,
which they were not intended to receive. And to the second
question the reply ought to be that in spite of the official
character of these figures, it would be very unwise to believe
them absolutely accurate. We know by too numerous ex-
amples that it was no trouble for the high officials of the
financial administration of the monarchy to falsify, by
alterations or concealments, the figures which rendered
account of their operations. We also know that they were
encouraged in this by the disorder and the obscurity which
characterized till the end the financial management of the
monarchy.
Necker's work belongs to the history of statistics in a
double sense. First, because the illustrious Minister of
Finance largely used and sometimes even abused statistics.
Then because he conceived more clearly than his predeces-
sors, Sully and Colbert, the necessity of coordination by the
creation of a real organ of general statistics.
In the Compte-rendu au Roi of January, 1781, in a great
number of chapters of his Administration des Finances
de la France (1784) and in the Etat GSnSral des Revenus et
Defenses fixes, presented to the States-General, May 5, 1789,
Necker did the work of a consummate statistician. It is in
the domain of financial statistics that he prefers to work.
But outside finance there is hardly a subject lending itself
to numerical observation which he does not approach and
try to illuminate by the use of statistics, such as population,
foreign trade, the monetary circulation of France, the cultiva-
tion of land, hospitals, beggary. That the figures which he
gives are often inexact is incontestable, and statisticians
have this grievance against him no less than financiers and
politicians. But that is a fault which would have been cor-
rected by the publication of all statistical documents, which
Necker courageously insisted on and of which he gave the
FRANCE 275
first example. Not only administrative conduct but also
statistics must naturally be improved by publicity which
submits them to the control of public opinion.
Necker and General Statistics of France
Necker has set forth his project for the organization of a
bureau de statistique gSn6rale in his book V Administration des
Finances de la France (Vol. Ill, Ch. XXVIII). What he
"planned to propose to his Majesty was the establishment
of a particular bureau intended solely for the collecting of
interesting information and arranging this information in a
clear and easy order" (p. 355). The object of this informa-
tion ought in his opinion to be (pp. 356-358) : " the extent of
all the contributions of the people, the respective proportions
of each class, the division of these same contributions by
provinces, the cost of collection, the number of employees
in the treasury, the consumption of salt and tobacco, the
docket of seizures and condemnations for contraband, the
number of hospitals, the number of patients which they re-
ceive annually, the increase or diminution of mendicants and
abandoned children, the extent of the roads and their an-
nual increase, the average number of those subject to work
on the roads (corviables) in each province, general table of;
the public debt, statements of the general operations of the
Caisse d'Escompte and the Mont-de-PiStS, the progress of the
cultivation of lands, the progress of population and of the
circulation of coin, the sum of imports and exports according
to the kind of merchandise. But it would be desirable to be
able to find also in the same depository several other kinds of
information, some of which, though apparently a matter of
simple curiosity, nevertheless have more or less direct bearing
upon all the deliberations demanded by financial administra-
tion and the government in general: such, for example, are
instructive researches in the amount of consumption of the
principal articles, the mean proportion between the seeding
and the product of lands, in different parts of the realm, in
the amount of land under cultivation, in variations in the
276 MEMORIAL VOLUME
price of labor, in the relations between the number of nobles
and privileged and the number of common people (roturiers),
in the number of ecclesiastics, in the number of Protestants,
in the progress of luxury in the capital, in the brevity of life
in some dangerous occupations, in the interest of foreigners
and of each nation in particular in the public funds, in the
condition and occupation of beggars or unfortunates assisted
in the diflFerent houses of charity and in many other equally
interesting subjects. "
One might wish for a better arranged enumeration, but
one could hardly ask for a more complete one. Does it not
include all the chapter headings in the Annuaires Statistiques
published by all civiKzed countries today? Necker had in
mind, moreover, the preparation of a veritable Annuaire de
Statistique which the new bureau was to supply. "It should
be observed, " he says (pp. 358-359) "that in all departments
of the administration there are persons in a position to make
researches relating to their ordinary occupations; and so the
new work would be limited to directing them, to soliciting the
different sorts of information, to putting them in order and
noting the variations which time might bring about. . . .
All the information which might be gathered ought to be in-
scribed in abridged form in a special register, referring for the
details to separate books; and in this way a general abstract
of the work could be brought together every year in a very
small space." Is not a "general abstract every year" ex-
actly our contemporaneous Annuaire Statistique?
But Necker went still further. He conceived and insisted
on international statistics. The following passage (p. 361)
leaves no doubt of that: "It would be desirable for all the
governments to form a depository similar to that we have just
indicated; it would be desirable if they should come some day
to commimicate without diflSculty all the general observa-
tions of which they should not be too jealous. It seems to me
that this noble and touching rapprochement would be likely
to unite them still more and arouse generous sentiments
everywhere. "
FRANCE 277
It is true that the illustrious and clear-seeing Genevan did
not succeed in realizing his vast program of statistical or-
ganization. Events did not permit it. But if others, more
fortunate than he, succeeded a little later in realizing it fully,
is it not just to ascribe to him at least in part the merit and
honor of it?
The Revolution and Statistics
It was the French Revolution which tried immediately to
realize the program.
The Revolution of 1789 opened in France a new era in
statistics. It is difficult to imagine the extraordinary vogue
-which this form of observing social facts enjoyed, from 1790
to 1805, not only with the public authorities but in public
opinion.
Setting out to renew from top to bottom the fiscal system
of France, the Constituent Assembly felt the need of knowing
as exactly as possible the state of the resources of the country
and the number of the population. It put the first problem
to Lavoisier and the second to a general enumeration or-
ganized under Articles I and II of the Law of July 22, 1791.
Lavoisier responded to the appeal of the ComitS des Con-
tributions publiqties of the Constituent by offering it the
r6sum6 of an immense work which he had put on the stocks
in 1784 and which the tragic events that marked the end
of his life did not allow him leisure to finish. The Con-
stituent had Lavoisier's work printed in 1791, under the
following title: Risultats extraits d'un ouvrage intituU: de
la Richesse territoriale du royaume de France, ouvrage dont la
redaction n'est point encore achevSe, remis au ComitS de
Vimposition par M. Lavoisier de I'AcadSmie des Sciences*
Lavoisier's purpose is twofold. It is, in the first place, to
find methods which will permit the calculation of the annual
consumption and production of France as they have been
found for calculating the population. It is, in the second
*Xlie text of it may be found in the Collection des Eeonomiites, de Guillaimin, Vol.
XIV, pp. 680-607.
278 MEMORIAL VOLUME
place, by applying the methods adopted, to furnish a certain
number of statistical data.
But Lavoisier does not conceal from himself the inade-
quacy of the means of information at hand in 1791. So he
takes up again the idea of Necker, and addressing himself
no longer to the king, as Necker had done, but to the repre-
sentatives of the nation, he declares: "that it will depend
only on them to found for the future a public establishment
in which shall be mingled the results of the balance of agri-
culture, of commerce and of population; in which the situa-
tion of the realm, its wealth in men, in production, in indus-
try, in accumulated capital shall be portrayed as in a brief
picture. To found this great establishment, which does not
exist in any nation, which can exist only in France, the
National Assembly has only to desire it and will it. The
actual organization of the realm seems to have been ar-
ranged in advance to lend itself to all these researches. "
That is indeed Necker's idea. But it is expressed by
Lavoisier with a force and an authority which one could not
expect of the Minister of Louis XVT.
The Constituent resolved, without hesitation, to proceed
to the complete enumeration, head by head, of the French
population, thus giving a shining proof of that profound
sense of the necessities of government which was allied in
it with conceptions often Utopian. Two measures served as
preface to the law of July 19-22, 1791. The first had a
fiscal purpose : it was embodied in a decree of June 28, 1790,
prescribing that directors of departments draw up a table
of all the municipalities with the amount of the active pop-
ulation and the imports. The second measure had a social
purpose; it took the form of an instruction, July 9, 1790,
from the Committee on Mendicancy, demanding a complete
enumeration with a view to the distribution of aid. But
the execution of these measures left much to be desired.
And that is why, no doubt, the authors of the great organic
law of municipal policy wished, first of all, to organize the
general enumeration of the population.
FRANCE 279
This is the text of Articles I and II of the law of July 22,
1791. They are evidently inspired by the conceptions of
Vauban (see above p. 43).
"Art. I. — In the towns and in the country, the munici-
pal bodies shall have a statement made of the roll of the
inhabitants, either by municipal oflScers or by Commissaires
de police, if there are such, or by citizens appointed for this
purpose. Every year, in the course of the months of Novem-
ber and December, that roll shall be verified anew. "
"Art. II. — The register shall record the declarations
which each inhabitant shall have made of his name, age,
place of birth, last place of residence, profession, trade and
other means of subsistence. "
These provisions have never been abrogated. But they
have never been put in force.* The formula (visa) which
one finds in all the laws relating to the quinquennial enumer-
ations which are made today is only homage rendered to
the great legislators of the first years of the Revolution. In
vain two decrees of August 11 and August 20, 1793, and the
law of October 2, 1795, recalled the necessity of observing
these provisions. Neither the Convention nor the Direc-
toire could bring it about. And yet, under the Directory,
the Ministry of Interior, which was for the moment in charge
of all enumerations, was entrusted twice in succession, in
1798 and in 1799, to one of the most ardent experts in sta-
tistics, Frangois de Neufchateau.
It would be unjust not to note, in the history of French sta-
tistics, the work of this minister of the Directoire. The activity
which he displayed as Minister of Interior, and especially
in the domain of statistics, was truly extraordinary. One
can form an idea of it by running over his Recueil des Lettres,
circulaires, instructions, programmes, discours et autres actes
publics Smanis du citoyen Frangois de Neufchateau pendant ses
deux exercises du Ministirede VInterieur (2 Vols. 8vo, Paris. —
*We wished to know, in 1911, in how many communes of France this provision
had been applied. We discovered 123 out of 36,192. In only three was it applied
as far back as 1791'. It went back to 1796, in the communes of Nancy and de Badon-
viller.
280 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Imprimerie de la R6publique, an VII). There one can follow
his incessant efforts appHed, with a somewhat naive ardor,
to all subjects relevant to statistics and trying to get from
statistics exact figures on every one of them. The cost of
living, the state of factories and manufactures, educational
institutions, of which nobody before him had ever dreamed
of asking for an enumeration, the state of the population
and its movement, — he is indifferent to nothing, or, to tell
the truth, he is equally passionate about everything. He
returns insistently to the necessity of keeping carefully the
registers of I'itat-civil, while he often deplores the negligence
of a great number of municipalities in this matter. It is to
him that we owe the first almost complete official frame-
work of the general statistics of France. He outlined it in
a great circular of 30 Frimaire an VII addressed to the
"administrations centrales de dSpartement."
Of all branches of statistics the one perhaps which events
contributed to develop most highly during the last years
of the eighteenth century was that which concerned the
necessities of life. The political economy of the Revolution
was hardly more than a sad copy of that of the monarchy,
and it had to lead fatally to the same results. The excessive
regulation of the production and distribution of the neces-
sities of life, as it was managed by Philip the Fair or by the
Convention, had the inevitable result of compelling the
authorities to know exactly by strict enumerations the
quantities and the prices. The task of having these enu-
merations made was entrusted to the Service des Subsistances
which was joined to the Ministry of Interior by a decree of
April 27, 1792. This Service was modified very often under
the Convention and under the Directoire. But among its
functions were always the statistics of crops and of prices
and it was again placed under the Ministry of Interior when
Lucien Bonaparte and Chaptal, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, became the chiefs of this department.*
*See for further details on this point Levasseur, Note on the service des subsist-
ances, in the volume of the XXVime anniversaire de la SociitS de StaUstique de Paris,
pp. 194-195.
FRANCE 281
There is little to say of financial statistics under the Revo-
lution.
They were, like the financial institutions themselves, in
process of transformation. The ancient organisms are
broken. The new organisms, in the torment which seizes
upon France, have not yet been able to form. They will
appear only with the Constitution of the year VIII and the
Consulate. The Constituent could not succeed in drawing
up the complete table of public expenses. The Legislative
Assembly and the Convention were unable to establish a
budget determined by the balance of receipts and expendi-
tures.*
However, financial statistics exist under the Revolution.
They are even very abundant. Two traits characterize
them and distinguish them profoundly from the financial
statistics of the ancient regime; first, they are most often
the work of men who are conscientiously seeking the truth
and who place it passionately at the service of public wel-
fare; second, they are subjected to the widest publicity and
the freest discussion. There has never been seein such a
multiplication of books and pamphlets filled with figures
relating to public finance as from 1789 to 1799.
The oflBcial documents of financial statistics of this time
are almost all m6moires, reports or messages addressed to
the great deliberative assemblies.
We shall cite only the principal ones:
First. The Rapport made in the name of the Committee
of Finance by the Marquis de Montesquieu, November 18,
1789. In it is found a table of the debts of France and
especially of the debts called criardes (crying).
Second. La Proclamation on public contributions issued
by the National Assembly to the French June 24, 1791.
All the old imposts and all the new are there set forth and
compared.
Third. The Rapport of the Marquis de Montesquieu, of
*See Stourm, BiUiographie historique des finances de la France au XVllIime
tiide, p. 171.
282 MEMORIAL VOLUME
August 27, 1790, on the public debt, its origins, the amount
of its capital and interest. The public debt, in 1798, con-
stituted an enormous mass, very complicated and very
obscure. The purpose of the rapport, to some extent at
least, was to indict the monarchy as well as to discover all the
elements and fix their exact figure. This explains the many
statistical investigations aimed at the monarchy by the
assemblies of the Revolution.
Fourth. Several mSmoires presented by Tarb6, minister
of contributions publiques under the Legislative, notably an
Etat gSnSral of expenses and means for the year 1792.
Fifth. The numerous mSmoires or rapports of Cambon
to the Legislative and the Convention, on the national
treasury, on the state of finance, on the issue of paper-
money {assignats), on the value of national property. All
the reports of Cambon, no matter what their particular
subject may be, including the celebrated report on the Grand-
livre of the public debt, August 15, 1793, are by far the most
important source of financial statistics under the Revolution.*
Sixth. A certain number of Messages financier es ad-
dressed by the Directoire to the Assembly of Five Hundred
from the 5th Brumaire an IV (October 27, 1795) to the 18th
Brumaire an VII (November 9, 1799).
We shall have completed the development of statistics in
the eighteenth century when we have mentioned the promise
inscribed by the Constituent Assembly, apropos of the
complete laicization of the actes de Vitat-dvil in article 7
{Titre II), of the Constitution of 1791, and the fulfilment
of this promise by the Legislative Assembly in the law of
September 20, 1792.
Neither the law of 1792 nor the provisions of the Civil
Code of 1804 which resulted from it have a statistical pur-
pose. But they nevertheless make fundamental use of those
statistical operations the object of which today is the actes de
I'itat-civil. It is on this score that they deserve to be noted
here.
*M. Stourm gives the complete list of them in the work cited in the preceding
note. See pp. 205-206, 221-224.
FRANCE 283
IV. Statistics in France in the Nineteenth Century
The nineteenth century has witnessed in France most of
the progress in the organization and practice of enumera-
tions which the most advanced spirits since Ftoelon and
Vauban, the abbe de Sainte-Pierre and the abb6 Expilly,
up to Necker and Lavoisier and de Neufchateau had only
been able to see dimly and prepare for. It is truly a cen-
tury of substantial realization.
The picture of the progress of statistics in France in the
nineteenth century would fill a volume. We are obliged
here to put it in a few pages. But a brief sketch can still
give, at least we hope so, an idea of the road that has been
travelled and the work that has been done.
These are what ought to be, as we see it, the essential
traits which it is proper to put in relief in this picture.
It is, in the first place, the extension of enumerations to
all the categories of facts touched by administrative and
governmental action. It is the adoption, for all enumera-
tions, old as well as new, of rational methods inspired by a
true scientific spirit. It is the conception and the execution
of enumerations made no longer with the exclusively utili-
tarian object of facilitating administrative and govern-
mental work, but with the higher object of satisfying the
desire for knowledge and disinterested research. It is the
wide publicity assured to all figures furnished by enumer-
ations. It is, finally, the multiplication of special institu-
tions established to carry out enumerations and publish the
results of them.
The account of the statistical labors which the nineteenth
century has imposed on all our departments of public serv-
ice will find its natural place later when we come to explain
the actual state of French statistics.
We shall confine ourselves in this last chapter devoted to
history: first, to giving by an example the measure of prog-
ress made in method; second, to making known the principal
branches of public service especially devoted to statistics,
which have been created in the course of the nineteenth
century.
284 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Demographic Statistics in the Nineteenth Century
I. We shall appeal to statistics of population for the
example of the improvements that have been made.
Population in all times and in all countries is the essential
object of statistics, and the enumeration of population is at
the same time the most necessary and the most diflficult.
Is it not, as Frangois de Neufchateau said, in a circular of
15 Fnictidor an VI, "the measure of the strength, the source
of the wealth, the political thermometer of the power of
states"? (See loc. cit. Vol. I, p. 142.)
The assemblies of the Revolution had committed to the
Ministry of Interior, created by the law of August 7, 1790,
the task of making all the enumerations relating to the
population, its status and movement. Nothing was changed
in this regard under the Consulate and under the Empire.
The Bureau de Statistique created in 1800 (we shall speak of
it again a little further on), and especially charged with the
work of population statistics, was subordinated to the
Ministry of Interior until 1812. It disappeared at this
time. When M. Thiers reestablished it, in 1833, statistics
of population remained one of its duties, but it passed from
the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Commerce. In
spite of that the Ministry of Interior has kept a sufficiently
important r6le, a r6le rather administrative than statistical,
in the quinquennial enumerations.
One of the first acts of Lucien Bonaparte, who became
Minister of Interior some weeks after the Coup d'Etat of
the 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799), was to cause the
passage of the law, 28 Pluvoise an VIII (February 17, 1800),
prescribing a general enumeration of the population. This
is what he said in a circular of S6 Floreal an VIII (May 16,
1800) addressed to the prefects* on the occasion of this
law: "Since the year IV, Citizen, the general administra-
tion has made unavailing efforts to procure complete lists
* We borrow the text of this circular from the Annales de Statistique of Bal-
lois, the founder, in 1802, of the first SociUi de Statistique which existed in
France and, we believe, in Europe. See Vol. II, pp. 8-10.
FRANCE 285
of the population of the Republic; the great number of
objects which they wished to bring together may have been
one of the principal reasons for the inaccuracy or the omis-
sions of the invoices. To overcome this obstacle I have had
a table drawn up in which it is only a question of determining
the result of the enumeration of the inhabitants of the Re-
public. It is necessary," he added in conclusion, "that this
work be done with such precision that the completed whole
may reach me within two months at the latest."
But the difficulties of execution were again stronger than
the will of the legislator. The obstacles before which the
iniendants and the controleurs gSnSraux of the ancient regime
had yielded, and which had not escaped the Conseil d'Etat
(vote of the S7 Fructidor an IX) were rooted in causes too
deep to disappear in a few years. It was not two months
but two years that they took to respond to the imperious
appeal of Lucien Bonaparte, and he was no longer Minister
of Interior when the responses arrived. These responses
were published in 1802 {An X).* They were hardly taken
seriously as Peuchet testifies.f And it was the same with
figures furnished by another census ordered by a circular of
November 3, 1805, and taken in 1806. We find proof in
evidence of another sort, it seems, from the testimony of de
Peuchet, proof to which nobody has paid attention, in the
magisterial introduction to the ThSorie Analytique des proba-
bilitis de Laplace,t "The registers of births which are kept
with care in order to ensure the status of citizens," says
Laplace (p. 45), "may serve to determine the population of
a great empire, without recurring to an enumeration of its
inhabitants, an operation which is troublesome and difficult
to perform accurately. But for this it is necessary to know
the ratio of the population to the annual births." How
* Under the title: Tableau giiUrd de la nouveUe divido/n de la France en dSparte-
ments, arrondisaements, communes et justices de paix . . . indiquani la popvla-
tion, I'Hendue territoriale et le nomhre des communes . . .
t Peuchet, StaMstique de la France, p. iiS.
I The text which we quote is taken from the third edition dated 1820; the first
appeared in 1812.
286 MEMORIAL VOLUME
arrive at that? After having indicated, with much preci-
sion, the surest method, Laplace informs us that the govern-
ment, convinced of the utility of employing this method, at
his request, ordered the counting, on September 23, 1802,
of the exact number of inhabitants in certain communes
chosen from 30 dSpartements. Armed with the figures sup-
plied by this enumeration, and after having compared them
with the number of births recorded in these same communes
during the years 1800, 1801 and 1802, Laplace made his
calculation and arrived, for the whole of France, at the figure
of 28,352,845 inhabitants, while the oflficial figures, of which
he does not breathe a word, were for 1801, 27,347,800, and
for 1806, 29,107,425. And the illustrious mathematiciasn
declares himself (p. 46) ready to "wager 300,000 to 1 thai
the error of this result is less than half a million." Who would
have dared make such a wager for the figures furnished the
Ministry of Interior by the prefects?
If we remember that Laplace had been Minister of Interior
before Lucien Bonaparte, that he had intimate knowledge of
all the data of demographic statistics of his time and that his
introduction to the ThSorie Analytique des probabilith bears
the dates 1812-1820, we shall understand that his silence
with respect to the official figures of 1801 and 1806 is even
more decisive than the criticisms of Peuchet.
Thus from 1806 to 1820, the question of a general enumera-
tion of the French people disappears. One would think that,
in this respect, things had gone backward a hundred years.
How can we explain the sudden abandoning of a method
which the assemblies and the ministers of the Revolution had
adopted with enthusiasm? By the scepticism of Laplace as
to its efficiency? By the confidence which the calculations of
the great mathematician may have inspired? Without
doubt, but only to a certain extent. The true explanation
lies elsewhere. No general enumeration was attempted
under the Empire because the Emperor did not wish it.
Napoleon was, as is well known,* in the habit of counting
* See the chanmng and instructive communication read by A. de Foville, at
FRANCE 287
everything; he estimated the service of statistics at its full
value (was it not he who said: "Statistics are the budget of
things and without a budget there is no safety"?); and he
was not a man to shrink before the difficulties of carrying
out an enterprise which he thought necessary. But we
know also that he liked statistics in the way that Louis XIV
liked them, that he demanded statistics of his prefects as the
great king had demanded them of his intendanis, on the con-
dition that they should not furnish fuel for indiscreet curios-
ity and the niisplaced criticisms of those whom he called
in the worst sense of the word, "ideologues." Now, if the
general enumeration of the French population had been
made, for example, in 1811, the Minister of Interior, de
Montalivet, could not have written in his ExposS de la
situaiion de I'Empire, presented to the Corps LSgislatif,
February 25, 1813: "The population has continued to in-
crease; industry has made new progress; never have the
lands been better cultivated; the manufactures more flour-
ishing; at no period in our history has wealth been more
distributed among the different classes of society"!
A general census was prescribed, for the year 1821, by a
circular of June 26, 1820. But it is probable that the official
table of the population which it furnished and which was
annexed to a royal ordinance of January 16, 1822, was ob-
tained by means of a simple estimate. It was the same in
1826 and in 1831.
From 1836 to 1901, there were in France four general
enumerations of the population. Their detailed history
would require long explanations and would not be in place
here.* It will suffice for us to point out, in a word, the im-
portant changes which were made in the methods employed
in the course of this period of nearly three quarters of a cen-
tury.
The quinquennial periodicity of enumerations (1796, 1801,
the 13th session of the Institut International de SUUistiqtie (The Ha^e), September
B, 1911, under the title: NapoUon Statislicien.
* This history will be found in the Introduction to Vol. I of the Riivltatt Statit-
tiquet du recensement gSniral de la population du SU Man, 1901, pp. 2-14.
288 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1806), was at first only a matter of custom. It was finally
established by the royal decree of January 16, 1822. It
offers indisputable advantages. It renders more exact the
application of all the laws which deal with the figure for the
population, and it assures good work in making the census
because it makes it easy to keep on a permanent force of
trained men.
A great step forward was taken in 1836 thanks to the use,
for the first time, of a form which designated the inhabitants
by family and by household {par famille et par mSnage).
It was completed in 1876 by the individual report {bulletin).
The sheet for the household {feuille de mSnage) is kept, but
it must contain as many individual reports as there are
residents. With the individual report there was obtained
at once more accuracy in enumeration and greater ease in
compilation {dSpouUlement) .
Until 1881 the census was not taken everywhere at the
same time; its duration was indeterminate and variable.
In 1881 it was agreed that the census should be made on a
fixed day, December 18, and that it should take in all people,
in a commune, who had spent there the night of December 17.
Finally, in 1901, it was decided to substitute for a com-
pilation by communes followed by a recapitulation by
dSpartements a system of central compilation which all
French statisticians had insisted on for a long time. In-
stead of a compilation scattered over the 30,000 communes
of France, made up, to tell the truth, of 30,000 different
compilations in which the too numerous chances of error
could hardly be diminished by revisions in the prefectures,
we have since 1901 a single compilation conducted by a
central department, especially established for this purpose,
under the best conditions as regards accuracy and quickness.
No doubt there is still much to be desired in point of accuracy
and speed. But that is due to the faults of human nature at
least as much as to the defects of om* system of enumeration.
The general enumerations of which we have just spoken
were not the only ones known to the nineteenth century.
FRANCE . 289
There were also partial enumerations and local enumera-
tions.
By partial enumerations we mean those which included
only a fraction of the population, for example, those which
were made from 1839 to 1845 and from 1861 to 1865 and
which, among other objects, determined the number of
workmen employed in manufacturing.
(^
Municipal Statistics
By local enumerations we mean those which were made
in certain cities of France, Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux,
Havre, Nancy and Reims, to mention only the more im-
portant. Those of Paris, the work of the administration
prifectorale and of the Municipality of the Capital deserve,
as much for the fact that they were made long ago as for
their extent and value, to occupy a place of honor in the
history of French statistics in the nineteenth century.*
In 1816 the administration prifectorale of the Seine con-
ceived the idea of resuming and renewing the Recherches
Statistiques sur la ville de Paris, which went back, it seems,
to the years 1802 and 1803, and which, in reality, were bound
up with the publication of the actes de Vitat-civil ordered by
Colbert in 1670. "The most important object of these
researches was the complete enumeration of the population
of the Capital; they succeeded, finally, in 1817 (February)
in surmounting the obstacles which had up to that time stood
in the way."t These investigations were carried out ac-
cording to a program "outUned, after an exhaustive dis-
cussion of all the questions," with the concurrence of the
mathematician Fourier. The program realized almost all de-
sirable points of progress. For example, it allowed for the
use of the individual report. It is thanks to this happy in-
* We may note also three surveys of industry in Paris made by the Chamber of
Commerce, the first in 1848, the second in 1860, the third in 1872, the results of
which were set forth in publications of great interest.
t Becherdhes Statistiques sur la ville de Paris et le Dipartemeni de la Seine, Vol. I,
Introduction, p. V. This Vol. I is dated 1821. It is the one that contains a
judicial study by Fourier entitled: notions gin&rcdes sur la population., pp. 1-94.
290 MEMORIAL VOLTJME
novation that the first census of the population of Paris may
serve as a model for the quinquennial census of the whole
of France, and that the PrSfet de la Seine, the Count de
Chambrol, was justified in saying, at the conclusion of his
report to the Ministry of Interior: "Accuracy is here carried
to the highest degree that the administration can attain in
such an extensive work which is the equivalent of the census
of twelve cities of 60,000 each. " (See loc. cit. pp. 112-113.)
After having given a rational organization to the census
of population, the authorities in Paris wished to do as much
for the odes de V Hat-civil. And so were established by a de-
cree of the prifet certificates of death which the physicians
of the Hat-civil were required to draw up in duplicate. These
certificates were very detailed; they included no less than
thirteen categories of information, and they have rendered
great service to public hygiene and even to scientific studies,
though they were not fully utilized until 1865.
For the whole of France, on the contrary, while so many
improvements were introduced into the taking of the census
of population, the method followed in the enumeration of the
odes de I'Stat-civil remained about what it had been at the
end of the eighteenth century. The compilation of the
registers of V Hat-civil was made first in each one of the 36,000
communes of France by the mayor, or, rather, by the mayor's
secretary. Every year, in the month of January, the secre-
tary was obliged to run through his three registers of births,
marriages and deaths, to reread all the actes and extract from
them a multitude of information which he had to consign
to a dozen lists of different models. Once filled, these lists
were sent, to be recapitulated and audited (controles), to the
Sous — 'prefecture at the capital {fihef-lieu) of the dSparte-
ment, and finally from the prefecture to the Ministry of
Commerce to be sent on from there to the Bureau de la
Statistiqus gSnSrale;* a detestable method which was unan-
imously condemned by all those who cared for accuracy and
* The most complete details regarding all these operations may be found in the
Manuel de Statistigue pratique by Tourquan (1891), pp. 114-164.
FRANCE 291
quickness in enumerations. It has happily been abandoned
since 1907.
II. If the nineteenth century has been a century of
exceptional progress in statistics, that is in great part because
it has introduced into the organization of statistics specializa-
tion of function, and because division of labor has resulted
here, as in industry, in the increase, both in quantity and
quality, of the productive power of man.
The special statistical institutions created in France in the
course of the nineteenth century are fairly numerous.
We shall say a few words about the principal ones, dis-
tinguishing state institutions from municipal, administrative
or executive institutions from advisory. <
Bureau dd la Statistique GSnirale
This is the first in point of time and in importance which
should be taken into account in the organization of French
statistics.
Some obscurity surrounds its origin. Its creation has
been credited to Frangois de Neufchateau.* That it may
have been one of the intentions of that fervent apostle of
statistics is highly probable. But there is no proof that it
actually originated with him. Peuchet, whose authority in
this matter is very great, tells usf "that Lucien Bonaparte
formed during his ministry a bureau de statistique of which
he made M. Duquesnoy director," which would place the
date of its creation between December 25, 1799, and Novem-
ber 6, 1800. But it seems that the measure was not defini-
tive until after Lucien Bonaparte went out and was suc-
ceeded in the Ministry of Interior by Chaptal, if one may
judge by a decree of the Consuls of the 3 Floreal an IX (April
23, 1801) assigning the service de la Statistique g6nirale to the
second bureau of the Ministry of Interior, the head of which
then was Deferriere, and which numbered among its members
* See Levasseur, La Population Franfaise, Vol. I, p. 298.
t See the preliminaiy discourse written by Peuchet at the beginning of Vol. I
of la Statistique glnirale et partieuliire de la France el de ses colonies by Herbin, T
Vols. -8°, Paris, 1803.
292 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Ballois, the founder of the Annales de Statistique and of the
first SocietS de Statistique de France. Whence it would follow
perhaps that the honor of creating the Bureau de la Statis-
tique gSnSrale ought to be divided between Lucien Bonaparte
and Chaptal.*
As long as Chaptal remained in the Ministry of Interior
the activity of the new service (jde la Statistique gSnhale) was
remarkable. We find the proof of it in the voluminous cor-
respondence which it held,t for about three years, with the
prSfets in preparation for a general enumeration of the popu-
lation and the resources of France which these officials had
been ordered to make by Lucien Bonaparte and Chaptal.
But after Chaptal went out of office things underwent a
curious change. The frifets showed little zeal in fulfilling
the duty which he had entrusted to them. The central
power which began to feel, in this regard, the personal influ-
ence of Napoleon readily took its cue from him, and the great
enterprise of the general statistics of France with which the
nineteenth century might well have begun remained still-
born. So that no one was surprised and no one protested
when a decree of September 1, 1812, ordered a new division
of labor in the Ministry of Interior and, this time, suppressed
the Bureau de la Statistique gSnSrale.
M. Thiers, Minister of Commerce in 1833, asked the
Chambres for authority to take up again the idea of publish-
ing a collection of documents of general statistics of France.
The authorization and the necessary appropriations were
granted and the bureau was reestablished, and it began in
1835 to publish the series of Documents Statistiques sur la
France. This series consists of 14 volumes in quarto, the
first of which appeared in 1852. It is far from including all
national statistics. But it deals with some of the chief
branches, territory, population, finance, agriculture, indus-
* See on this subject: First, Un Pr^et du Consvlai, Beugnot by Etienne Dejeau,
directeur des Archives (1907), pp. 24i7-i886; second, Historique et Travaux de la fin
du XVIIlime siicle au dibul du XXime par la direction de la Statistique giiUrale de
la France (1913), pp. 5-8.
t See Archives Nationales, Sferie F. 20 — Statistique, Vols. I and II.
FBANCE 293
try, foreign trade, consumption and prices. And on some
of these topics it goes back, so far as is possible, to the
figures of the eighteenth century.
Under the influence of poUtical events the Bureau de la
Statistique gSnSrale was subjected to numerous modifications,
in 1852,* 1871, 1907 and 1910. But they all affected the
form of the institution rather than its essential character.f
This has changed very little fundamentally in eighty years.
It is not so comprehensive as the title given to the bureau
would lead us to suppose. The principal object, at all
periods, has been the population of France as it is given
to us both by the quinquennial census taken since 1801 and
by the annual summaries of the odes de I'Hat-civU. The only
document of truly general statistics, the preparation and
publication of which has been incumbent on the bureau
since 1878, is the Annuaire Statistique de la France. We shall
have occasion presently to speak of it again.
Bureau de Statistique du Ministere de la Justice
The first idea of assembling and publishing statistical
data on the workings of the department of justice is set forth
in a circular of 3 Plumose an IX, and the first publication,
very limited and condensed, appears in the Exposi de la
situation de I'Em'pire presented by Montalivet in 1813.
The annual statistical publications of the Ministry of
Justice date from 1827. They deal with the cases of the
year 1825 and only with cases of criminal justice. It was,
indeed, due to the initiative of a director of affaires crimi-
nelles in the Ministry of Justice, M. de Guerry de Champneuf,
that the publication took place. And it is doubtless due
to the same initiative that the Bureau de Statistique which
was created at this time was subjoined to the Direction des
affaires criminelles. Data relating to civil justice were not
* The decree of July 12, 1852, was not limited, as many imagine, to the prepare^
tion of statistics of agriculture; it included the general statistics of France. The
cantonal commissions were to coSperate in the quinquennial census of the popula-
tion and the compilation of the registers of VHat-eivil.
t For details see Historique el travaux . . . loc. eit. pp. 8-18.
294 MEMORIAL VOLUME
published till 1833; but they go back to the year 1821. The
first volume contained data for the judiciary years 1821 to
1830. They might well have gone back further, for the
collecting of them resulted from carrying out a decree of
March 30, 1808, which ordered the 'proeureurs giniraux to
send to the Chancellerie every six months the principal
results of the administration of Justice.
Bureau de Statistique du Ministere des Travaux Publics
The Ministry of Public Works is, perhaps, with the Minis-
try of Finance, the one which offers for numerical observa-
tion, in all the domains in which it plays, the most abundant
and varied material. A great number of special departments
of statistical service were established in the ministry in the
course of the nineteenth century.
An ordinance of December 14, 1844, organizing the central
administration of this ministry, created under it a Bureau
Central de Staiistique entrusted with "the research of all
documents necessary to determine the general movements
of travel throughout the kingdom; the comparison of the
costs of transportation by the various methods of commu-
nication; the study of the influence of tariffs, of the opening
of new outlets, of analogous facts gathered from all the other
countries of Europe; the centralization of all information on
the economic condition of railways," etc. In 1850 an order
of May 31 reinforced the Bureau with a Commission de
Statistique centrale. Three ordinances of February 23, 1847,
April 12, 1848, and June 22, 1863, entrusted to bureaus or
special departments the Statistics of Railways. In 1874 a
new order, dated December 28, established a Service d'Studes
Sconomiques et de renseignements statistiques, whose researches
were especially confined to roads, canals, ports and tram-
ways. We may mention, finally, the creation of an ordinance
of March 12, 1878, of the Bureau de la Statistique gra-phique
which was to issue for more than twenty years that beau-
tiful publication known under the name of Album de Statis-
tique graiphique, for which we owe so much gratitude to the
FRANCE 295
learning and devotion of M. Cheysson. This, according to
an ordinance of July 3, 1878, was to be the mission of this
bureau: "to prepare representative (figuratives) charts and
diagrams expressing in graphic form statistical documents
relating to the current of travel of passengers and freight on
lines of communication of all kinds and at the sea ports, and
to the construction and exploitation of these lines and these
ports, in a word, all the economic facts, technical or financial,
which relate to statistics and may be of interest to the
administration of public works." Bearing on the same
objects, a Bulletin Mensuel de Statistique et de ISgislation com-
parie was published, beginning with 1880, by the Direction
of which the bureau was a part and which bore the name:
Direction des cartes, plans et archives et de la Statistique
graphique. The Album had begun to appear in 1879.
Graphic statistics were not, certainly, invented in 1878.
The real inventor seems to be William Plajrfair, a most
industrious English statistician of the end of the eighteenth
century, who published in London, in 1788, Tableaux d'arith-
mHique linSaire of which two translations appeared in Paris,
one in 1789, the other in 1802. Graphic statistics were
applied as early as 1844, explained and defended in a
mSmoire of 1861, by the French engineer Minard, inspector-
general of bridges and causeways. But they received their
final confirmation in 1878, and with our Ministry of Public
Works remains the honor of having contributed largely to
the generalization of their use not only in France but in
foreign countries.
Why was it necessary that the regrettable mistake should
have been made, in the last years of the nineteenth century,
of sacrificing, for the purpose of reducing the budget, some
of these excellent statistical institutions? The Bureau de la
Statistique graphique has disappeared and with it the Bulletin
Mensuel de Statistique et de Ugislatiofi comparSe and the
Album de Statistique graphique. In particular the suppression
of this Album is a serious loss to administration and to
science.
296 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Bureau de Statistique et de Legislation comparie du Ministere
des Finances
Of all divisions of statistics Finance is perhaps that in
which shines most brilliantly the progress achieved in
France in the nineteenth century.
With mediocre financial organization and departments of
finance still more mediocre the monarchy could not but have
an inadequate system of financial statistics, too condensed to
enlighten the privileged few who had the right to consult
them, and often misleading. The same thing was true,
though for different reasons, under the Revolution and under
the Empire. Financial statistics began to improve only
from the moment when there were established in our financial
legislation the correct and certain methods demanded by the
practice of a parUamentary regime. This moment may be
placed somewhere between 1817 and 1825. M. Stourm
speaks of "the restoration, creator of financial order."*
One can speak with equal truth of the restoration,! creator
of financial statistics.
Up to 1877 all the departments of the Ministry of Finance
without exception compiled the statistics of their operations
and also, in the matter of imposts for example, the statistics
of the facts to which those operations applied. Statistics
were at once the necessary condition and the natural result
of the departments discharging their functions properly.
But each of the departments gave to its statistical work the
form and extent which it saw fit. The works of some of them
were regularly published; the works of many were published
only accidentally or not at all.
Leon Say was Minister of Finance in 1876. He had the
happy idea of establishing a Bureau de Statistique et de
ISgislation compar6e which should constitute the central
statistical department of the ministry and which should
publish a Bulletin Mensuel in which should be grouped and
classified documents emanating from all the special depart-
* See Le Budget, Sime edition, p. 228.
t The restoration of the Bourbon kings 181S. — ^Tr.
FRANCE 297
ments. And he had the good luck to find at hand the man
most competent to carry out his idea, namely, Alfred de
Foville. A requisition for an appropriation (jdemande de
crSdit) was put before the Chambres in the proposed budget
of 1877. This is an extract from the explanation of its
purposes which we find at the beginning of the first section
(livraison) of the Bulletin (January, 1877) ; it deserves to be
quoted in full: "The work of statistics and comparative
legislation, in spite of the importance and the interest which
it has for an administration as considerable as that of finance,
has never been centralized in a definitive way, and in default
of a common management and of sufficient resources, the
attempts which have been made repeatedly to give to this
work the necessary unity, development and publicity have
always remained fruitless. There is a regrettable gap to fill
up. The usefulness of a methodical and minute observation
of economic facts is today universally recognized, and purely
financial statistics, perforce omitted from the publications of
the Ministries of Agriculture and of Commerce,* constitute
in themselves a field of study sufficiently broad to justify the
organization of a special department which has been in-
sistently demanded for a long time by parliamentary com-
missions and by French and foreign economists. The
creation of a Bureau of Statistics will allow the periodic
presentation to the public of interesting documents on the
various financial questions, such as: national receipts and
expenditures, the different laws on the matters of imposts,
public domain, floating values {vcdeurs mobUieres), banks, etc.
The annual expense will not exceed 30,000 francs. "
And this is the response which was made to this requisition
by the reporter of the commission on the budget of 1877,
M. Adolphe Cochery:
"The new appropriations asked for are divided as follows:
Personnel 20,000 frs.
Material 2,500 frs.
Printing 7,500 frs.
* The Ministry of Agriculture was not separated from the Ministry of Commerce
until 1881.
298 MEMORIAL VOLUME
"These appropriations are necessary to create in the
Ministry of Finance a Bureau of Statistics and comparative
legislation in what concerns financial questions. A monthly
bulletin would give to the public the work collected by this
bureau. Your commission cannot but applaud this project.
Documents necessary to the study of questions which are so
important to the economic future of this country are lacking.
We propose that you grant to the Minister of Finance the
appropriations which he asks. "
Two things here are of a nature to surprise a reader who
has not been forewarned. The first is, for an enterprise of
this scope, the extreme modesty of the appropriation asked
for. If instead of being asked for in France it had been
asked for in the United States, it would have been a matter
not of 30,000 francs but of 30,000 dollars, perhaps of 100,000,
The second is that with such a slim appropriation there
could be obtained the magnificent results which are spread
through 80 octavo volumes published since 1877, many of
which run to 700 and 800 pages.
Without doubt the figures contained in the published
documents were not gathered by the Bureau of Statistics.
The collection is the work of special departments. But the
work which properly belongs to the bureau, which was for
seventeen years the personal work of Alfred de Foville, is
the choice and arrangement of the material, the construc-
tion from this material of tables and charts bearing on facts
enumerated for long periods and thereby offering great inter-
est both practical and scientific* We shall revert to it in
the second part of this work.
A. Bureau des Subsistances et de la Statistique agricole
B. Office de renseignements agricoles
A. The decree of November 14, 1881, which created in
France the Ministry of Agriculture gave the new ministry
a Bureau des Subsistances et de la Statistique agricole. Neither
* See our study of Alfred de FovUle {lAbraire du Syrey, Paris, 1914), p. 66.
FRANCE 299
the ministry nor the bureau was really a new institution.
The ministry had as its antecedent the department of agri-
culture subjoined to the Ministry of Interior in 1790, and
later, under the Restoration, to the Ministry of Commerce.
And the Bureau des Subsistances et de la Statistique went back
still further, for we find it connected with the Contrdle
gSnirale des Finances in 1763.
But in spite of the age and specialization of this organ of
statistics, in spite of the bold and in many respects remark-
able attempt which was confirmed by the too little known
decree of July 1, 1852,* in spite of the decree of November
14, 1881, French agricultural statistics differed very little in
the nineteenth century from what they had been in the
eighteenth. The data were furnished by arbitrary and super-
ficial estimates due to the transient collaboration of incom-
petent administrators, prefects, under-prefects, mayors,
agriculturists and proprietors chosen haphazard. Every-
body agreed in this and everybody embraced in a prudent
scepticism all agricultural statistics published in the nine-
teenth century, the decennial statistics of 1852, 1862 and
1892 as well as the annual statistics and even the interna-
tional statistics of 1873.
A profound niodification has been made in the organiza-
tion and the methods. That was the idea and the purpose
of the authors of the laws of April 25, 1901, and August 27,
1902. Without distorting the truth, the mention of these
two laws seems to be properly included in the history of
statistics in the nineteenth century.
The law of April 25, 1901, founded in the Ministry of
Agriculture :
B. Office de renseignements agricoles. — ^It is the successor of
the Bureau des Subsistances et de la Statistique agricole. But
with duties notably enlarged and means infinitely strength-
ened.
* The SoeiHi de StatMque de Paris has had the happy idea of pubUshing lately
the text of this decree and of the report which precedes it. (See Journal de la
SocUlS de Statistiqve de Paris, May, 1904, pp. 211 ft.)
300 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Its duties were defined with great clearness in an official
note contained in the Bulletin Mensuel de V Office for January,
1902 (pp. 1-7).
"The Office," says this note, "is at once a department of
information, of study and of popularization." Of the details
which are given to us of its functions these are the parts
which concern statistics: "Research, centralization and pub-
lication of statistical information on agricultural products
in France and abroad; — ^general and special reports on agri-
cultural products and foodstuflEs; — centralization of fiscal
and customs statistics relating to agricultural products; —
centralization and compilation of divers periodic information
on the agricultural situation in each of the dSpartements and
abroad; — statistics of salaries and wages of agricultural
laborers; — annual and periodic agricultural statistics; —
cantonal conamissions and municipal sub-commissions of
agricultural statistics; — graphic statistics; — statistical pub-
lications of every nature, Bulletin of the Ministry of
Agriculture, investigations {enquites), Annuaire of markets
{f aires el marcMs)"
And after these details the note adds: "The scope of
agricultural statistics will be progressively enlarged, not
only for France but for foreign countries. Until now, indeed,
annual statistics furnished information only on a limited
number of agricultural products, leaving out other food-
stuffs which are not less important. The old reports relating
to animals and their products dealt only with certain cate-
gories and were not sufficiently detailed. The old statistics
gave no indications with respect either to agricultural indus-
tries or to agricultural associations or the numerous labor
unions which have been created in France since 1884, or to
the different mutual benefit organizations connected with
these unions. Farmers, finally, possessed no information on
the holding of public or private markets {f aires et marcMs).
The new program is to fill in these omissions."
The next question is by what means such a vast program
is to be realized and especially how one shall set out to
FRANCE 301
assemble, without too great a chance of error, all the elemen-
tary data of agricultural statistics?
The decree of August 27, 1902, undertook to answer this
question. Its motives and objects are well expressed in the
report which presented it for the signature of the President
of the RepubUc and which can be read in the Bulletin Men-
suel de VOffice des rens&ignements agricoles with the text it-
self of the decree (August, 1902, pp. 1392-1405). We learn
from this notably that the Minister of Agriculture had been
struck by the inconvenient results of the co-existence of
annual statistics compiled by his department and those
compiled by the comitSs des ravitaillement of the Ministry
of War. These statistics were too often and too perceptibly
divergent.
It created four different organs whose duty it was to co-
operate, each according to its own rank and in its own man-
ner, in estabhshing agricultural statistics.
First, communal commissions of not less than five mem-
bers nor more than seven under the presidency of the mayor;
second, cantonal commissions composed of four members
of the right and six to twelve members named by the prefect;
third, under-prefects and special professors of agriculture;
fourth, prefects and departmental professors of agriculture.
And above these four organs two superior organs, whose
mission it is, one in an executive capacity, the other in a
consultant capacity, to direct from above the complete
elaboration of agricultural statistics; the Office of which we
have just spoken and the ComiU consultatif de Statistique
agricole which is another creation of the law of August 27,
1902, composed of forty members, twenty from the right,
twenty nominated by the Minister of Agriculture, with a
permanent commission of fifteen members.
It will be enough for us to say that the collaboration of
these divers organs is very minutely regulated by circulars
or instructions to the prefects and the department professors
under the dates August 28, September 18, October 28,
November 13 and December 19, 1902, and to call attention
302 MEMORUL VOLUME
to the precautions taken by Article 57 of the law to reassure
the people by guaranteeing that the statistical investiga-
tions shall never have fiscal consequences.
We shall add only two remarks.
We shall note in the first place the important position
occupied in the organization of agricultural statistics by the
professors of agriculture. That is an excellent element which
was lacking in the application of the decree of 1852. And in
the second place we shall mention one of the most original
creations of the decree of 1902, the registre des Cultures which
was to be kept in each commune. We shall give an idea of
the capital r61e which this register is called upon to play, by
quoting Article 2 of the law: "There is established in each
commune a registre des Cultures which is to keep the index
of the area under cultivation and that of the average yields
of produce; this register is intended to serve as the basis of
agricultural statistics."
What sort of future is in store for this new organization.?
It is too soon to say. It is more complicated and unwieldy
than that of 1852. That, indeed, included only cantonal
commissions. There are, however, reasons to hope that it
will be more solid and more efficient. But it would be im-
prudent, we believe, to go so far as to say that it is sure of
complete success. It is enough, in order to have some doubts
in this respect, to think that the number of collaborators
required for the application of Article 5 of the law of 1902
is at least 180,000 and may go as high as 252,000 for the
36,000 communes of France; to whom must be added the 10
to 14 members of the cantonal commissions, that is, for the
2,850 cantons, 35,000 to 40,000 persons. This immense
army of statisticians is imposing by virtue of its number.
But is it not a httle disturbing from the point of view of
quality?
But whatever happens, it is just to recognize that the
laws of 1901 and 1902 bear witness to a great eflfort and great
good will* to strengthen in France a branch of statistics that
* The department of agriculture desired, in particular (see the Keport cited above.
FRANCE SOS
embraces in its researches the most important part of our
national wealth.
Le Conseil SupSrieur de Siatistique
Partly foreseen at the beginning of the eighteenth century
by the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, under the name of AcadSmie
Politique, long demanded, in the course of the nineteenth
century by the most authoritative statisticians, this Conseil
was created by a law of February 19, 1885. It was, by the
act that gave birth to it, and it remained, subordinate to the
department of general statistics. It comprised, originally,
41 members, 14 from the Parlement and learned bodies and
27 delegated by the ministries. This number was increased
to 62 by two laws, of July 24 and November 20, 1893, and to
68 by a law of April 3, 1912; a ministerial order of January
27, 1900, very happily inspired, gave it a permanent com-
mittee of 20 members.
Its functions arejpurely consultative. This is the enumera-
tion of them given in articles of the decree:
"It gives its opinion: 1st, on the choice of sources, on the
methods, on the outlines, questionnaires and programs which
shall be submitted to it by public departments, as well as on
the different arrangements necessary to impressing upon
oJ0Bcial publications a certain uniformity; 2d, on the compo-
sition and editing of the Annuaire Statistique de la France,
which is intended to present the resume of official statistics;
3d, on the undertaking and publication of new statistics;
4th, on maintaining relations between the departments of sta-
tistical service in France and abroad; 5th, on the organization
of the Bibliotheque de Statistique internationale which will be
established at the Ministry of Commerce; 6th, on the
pubUcity to be given to the work of the Conseil; 7th, on
questions relating to information and to other general in-
terests of statistics."
p. 1394), to try to realize the wishes expressed in an interesting study on the
"methods and results of agricultural statistics in the principal producing countries"
presented by M. Levasseur to the Insiiiut International de Statistique (Session at
Buda-Pesth, September, 1901).
304 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The report of the deliberations of the Conseil is published
in the Bulletin du Conseil SupSrieur de Statistique. The
collection of this Bulletin is as yet of very modest size. That
is not the fault of the Conseil. The public authorities have
not appealed as much as naight be desired to its devotion
and competence. It is enough, however, to glance at the
nunutes of its meetings to note the number and interest of
the questions it has treated and to be convinced that one will
find there, when one wishes, the elements of some of the
necessary reforms which have still to be made in French sta-
tistics.
Le Bureau de Statistique de la Ville de Paris
Statistical pubHcations of the city of Paris and even pub-
Ucations of considerable importance are anterior to the crea-
tion of a special department of mimicipal statistics. Thus,
without going back to Colbert and M. Grimbarel, com-
missaire au Chdtelet, who published, in 1771, two folio vol-
umes under the title I'Etat Civil de Paris, the remarkable
work contained in the six volumes of Recherches Statistiques,
pubUshed from 1821 to 1860, does not seem, whatever
Levasseur may say, to have been prepared by a Bureau de
Statistique*
The initiative for the creation of a Bureau Central de
Statistique was taken by the Municipal Conseil of Paris, in a
vote of July 26, 1877, and it was realized by an order of
the Prefect of the Seine, M. Herold, December 24, 1879,
which instituted: first, a bureau of municipal statistics and,
besides that, second, a commission of municipal statistics
playing the same part with reference to the bureau as that
played by the Conseil Supirieur de Statistique with reference
to the Service de la Statistique giniral de la France.
The task assigned to this new organ of statistics was
double: first, to centralize statistical information assembled
by the different municipal departments, finance, highways,
*See the volume of the SBime anniversaire de la SociMi de Statistique de Pari*,
1886, pp. 200 and 202.
FRANCE 305
water, police, and oversee their publication; second, to elab-
orate the statistical information which concerns the actes
de l'6tat-civil, paying special attention to documents which
are of interest from the point of view of public hygiene and
sanitation.
One may say, without exaggeration, that this task has
been fulfilled in a superior manner for thirty five years by
Dr. A. BCTtillon who was the organizer of the Bureau, and
by his son who succeeded him in 1883, Dr. Jacques Bertillon.
The collection of the Annuaire Statistique de la ville de Paris,
the first volume of which bears on the year 1880, is one of
those most honorable to contemporaneous French statistics.
Part II. Actual Organization of Statistics
All the great departments of public service in France
cooperate today, under very different forms, in the elabora-
tion and publication of official statistics. They are each
connected with one of the ministries. We must, then, make
our divisions according to the ministries in order to enumer-
ate and describe our departments of pubUc service from the
point of view of statistics.
But our twelve ministries, in turn, may from this point
of view be divided into three distinct groups if we wish to
take account of the nature of the facts which they have to
enumerate.
First. Group of ministries for which statistics have a
primarily economic character :
a. Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (PrSvoyance).
b. Ministry of Agriculture.
c. Ministry of Finance.
d. Ministry of Public Works.
e. Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Tele-
graphs.
f. Ministry of Colonies.
g. Ministry of Interior.
h. Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
306 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Second. Group of ministries for which statistics have a
primarily moral character:
a. Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts.
b. Ministry of Justice and Penal Institutions {service
fSnitentiare) .
Third. Group of ministries of a military character, which
have as their principal mission national defense;
a. Ministry of War.
b. Ministry of Navy.
We shall pass them in review in the preceding order of
enumeration.
First Group
First. Ministere du Travail et de la Privoyance Sociale. —
It is the subordination of the Statistique gSnSral de la France
to this ministry which gives it, in spite of the very recent
date of its creation (law of October 26, 1906), exceptional
importance in the domain of statistics.
The division of general statistics has been, since the law of
November 1, 1910, an autonomous department in the sense
that it is placed under the direct authority of the Minister
of Labor.
Under the supreme direction of a director and an under-
director the department of la Statistique GSnSrale is divided
into six distinct sections.*
I. The Section of compilations and calculations whose
activity is principally concerned with the bulletins, schedules
and memoranda (borderaux) of the quinquennial census and
with the lists {fiches) of VMat-dvil. The generalization of
the fiches for the enumeration of the actes d'Hat-dvil dates
from 1907.
II. The section of demographic statistics.
III. The section of industrial statistics.
IV. The section of economic statistics.
V. The section of social statistics.
VI. The section of the Bibliotheque.
*We aie summing up here long and interesting details given by the service de la
i5<a<u%i<e 9^nJra2e itself in the pamphlet HixJongue e< 7rai>aii2 . . . pp. 23-45.
FRANCE 307
Duties
The statistical activity of the service de la Statistique
gSnSrcde manifests itself in two ways:
First, by works of a general bearing which fully justify
its title;
Second, by special works dealing with some limited statis-
tical subject.
A. Works of a General Nature
These works are of two kinds: compilations and publica-
tions.
a. Compilations. — Le service de la Statistique gSnSrale does not
confine itself to compiling the enumerations which are made
under its direction. It can also compile enumerations made
by other public departments. This generalization of func-
tion was instigated by a vote passed in 1900 by the Conseil
SupSrieur de Statistique of which this is the text: "that the
central office created for the compilation of the quinquennial
census be put at the disposal of the public administrations
whenever they shall judge it opportune to have recourse
to it. " Although renewed in 1903, this vote has not so far
been often applied. The examples which one can cite are
very encouraging but they are all too rare. Certainly
among the enimierations made by the various departments of
public service, there are some, such as those in which the
facts enumerated are drawn from the registers kept by the
departments, that could not well be compiled by the service
de la Statistique ginSrale. But it might be entrusted with
the compilation in all cases where use is to be made of bulle-
tins and fiches.
h. Publications. — ^The publications of a general nature
are two in number, one annual, the other quarterly.
First. The annual, which is the older (it goes back to
1878), and by far the more important, is I'Annuaire Statistique
de la France.
An Annuaire de Statistique is the methodical yearly group-
ing or resume of all statistical documents emanating from
the various departments of public service of a country and
308 MEMORIAL VOLUME
bearing, as far as possible, on the facts of a given year, on
those of the year nearest to the date of publication .
Such is the elementary idea of VAnnuaire Statistique . It
is the same in all countries, and they constitute the large
majority, in which this kind of publication exists.
The habit has spread, for some time, of adding to the
figures for the year for^which the Annuaire is made, first,
those of a more or less extended period which are furnished
by the old statistics of the country; second, those furnished
by foreign statistics which seem to be comparable to the
first. The Annuaire has thus become a document of national
and of international statistics, and thereby its twofold value,
at once practical and scientific, has been greatly increased.
The value of an annuaire depends on the quality of the
classifications which it applies to an enormous mass of
social facts that are subject to numerical observation, on
the quantity of figures or tables of figures which it contains,
on the clarity of their arrangement, on the ease with which
it can be handled. Without attaining perfection (probably
nobody will ever attain it) the service de la Statistique gSnSr-
ale de la France, guided and sustained by the Conseil SupS-
rieure de Statistique, can take credit for having given us one
of the best, most complete, most instructive Annuaires
which one can consult.
These are the grand divisions of the Annuaire, forming
the thirty third volume of the collection, which deals with
the year 1913 and appeared in 1914.
I. Annual tables (338 pp.) .
Part I. Climatology.
Part II. Territory and population — State of pop-
ulation {Etat des personnes).
Part III. Production and economic movement.
Part IV. Revenues and consumption.
Part V. Government and administration.
Part VI. Colonies and protectorates.
II. Retrospective tables (155 pp.).
III. Information concerning foreign countries (70 pp.).
FRANCE 309
In the six parts of the annual tables, as in the retrospective
tables and in the international statistics, the source of all the
figures is always carefully indicated.
Second. The second publication of a general nature is,
since October, 1911, the Bulletin de la Statistique ginSrale de
la France (large octavo of 112 pages per number).
Like the Annuaire, the Bulletin deals with the total col-
lection of social facts observed by statistics in France and
abroad. But its object is to publish the figures almost
immediately upon their appearance and thus to put them at
the disposal of the public much more rapidly than is possible
in the case of the Annuaire.
And it does not confine itself to giving figures. It gives
also:
a. Returns which provide information about the most
important statistical work in France and abroad.
b. Resume of laws and orders which have statistical in-
terest.
c. Special and original studies in which statistical data
are handled with individual authority.
B. Special Works on Limited Topics
Here one can distinguish three varieties of work :
a. The organization and direction of enumerations.
b. Their compilation.
c. The publication of the results.
a. The quinquennial enumeration of the French popula-
tion is the chief work of the service de la Statistique gSnirale
de la France. Among the other enumerations which it
organizes and directs we may mention: the census of officials
(fonctionnaires) undertaken in 1905 in accordance with a
vote of the Conseil SupSrieur de Statistique; that of wages and
the cost of living at the present time and during preceding
periods; that of motive powers (forces matrices) in 1906.
b. Compilation, properly speaking, presupposes an enum-
eration in which the facts are counted by means of schedules
or fiches applying to each one of them, as is done today for
the general census and for that of the actes de I'itat-dvil.
310 MEMORIAL VOLUME
It consists of bringing together all statistical operations
which allow the drawing of results from the enumerations.
These operations are notation, classification, mechanical
counting of the schedules and verification of the count.
c. Publication of results. It is the quinquennial census
of the population which supplies the material for the most
important publications of the service de la Statistique gSnSrale
de la France. They habitually bear the title: RSsultats
Statistiques du recensement ghtSral de la population.
Their extent varies greatly. The results of the enumera-
tion of 1856 were contained in a volume of 184 pages; those
of the enumeration of 1891 in two volumes of 814 and 349
pages. Those of the enumeration of 1896 filled four volumes
amounting to 2,751 pages. Finally, the results of the
enumeration of 1901 filled four volumes amounting to S,816
pages. These differences in extent are explained by differ-
ences in content. Indeed it is one of the peculiarities of
these publications that their content, since 1901, has changed
every five years. When the census takes place in a year
whose date ends in 1, the figures relating to the kat-dvil of
individuals are given in greater detail. When it takes place
in a year whose final figure is 6, preference is given to details
on industries and occupations.
Moreover, since 1891, there has almost always been an-
nexed to the general census of population a census limited to
some particular object, the inquiry proper to this object
being especially facilitated by the operations of the general
enumeration. Thus in 1891 a detailed enumeration was
made of strangers living in France. In 1901 there was taken
a special census of motive powers, habitations, families,
blind and deaf-mutes.* The census of families and habita-
tions was taken again in 1906.
While the census of population has always been quinquen-
nial, that of the axles de Stat-civU has for a long time been
*It is fitting to call attention to F Album graphique in which the service de la Statis-
tiqye girUrale illustrated the census of 1901. This album, published in 1907, con-
tains no less than 273 plates.
FRANCE 311
annual, and an annual publication made known the results
of it.
Let us recall again, for it was a great innovation which
cannot be too strongly insisted on, that since 1907 local ad-
ministrations have been relieved of all statistical work
which touches on the actes de I'Stai-dvil. Their task is
limited to making a record of each of these actes on a fiche
and sending every six months the collection of fiches to the
service de la Statistique gSnSrale de la France. It was also
in 1907 that it was decided to pubUsh, every five years only,
the detailed results of the compilation of these fiches. A
summary table of the number of births, marriages and deaths
is inserted in the Journal Offidel every six months.
For the complete detail of the publications of the service
de la Statistique gSnSrale de la France, we shall take the liberty
of referring to the pamphlet {Historique et travaux),
which we have already cited, and to the lists which are to be
found on the back of each of the publications which have ap-
peared.*
Travaux Statistiques dus aux services ginhaux du Ministere
du Travail. — ^The mere mention of them will be enough to
show that the service de la Statistique gSnSrale de la France
does not absorb all the statistical activities of the Ministry
of Labor.
First. Statistics relating to labor and the conditions of
the workers, to cooperative societies, are prepared by the
first bureau of the department of labor. It publishes the
Bulletin du Ministere du Travail (formerly the Bulletin de
I' Office du Travail).
Second. The annual statistics of strikes have been pub-
lished since 1891 by the third bureau of this same depart-
ment.
Third. The statistics of industrial accidents are published
by the first bureau of the department of Insurance and Social
*We may note particularly: First, La Statistique internOtioncde du mouvement
de la Population, 1907 (-8°, 880 pp.). published at the request of the Institul
Jnlemational de Statistique; second, the second volume of this publication dealing
with the years 1901-1910, which appeared m 1913 (I Vol. -8°, 298 pp.).
312 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Welfare (PrSvoyance) in the form of a report inserted in the
Journal Officiel.
Fourth. The statistics of the operations of the ordinary
Savings Banks and of the National Savings Bank are pre-
pared by the second bureau of this same department.
Fifth. The statistics of Mutual Benefit Societies are
prepared by the second bureau of the department of In-
surance {MutualiU).
Sixth. The first bureau of the division of pensions for
workmen and peasants has the task of determining, in an
annual report to the President of the Republic, the statistics
of these pensions.
Seventh. The division of the Inspection of Labor (second
bureau of the department of labor) publishes the statistics of
establishments subject to inspection.
Ministry of Agriculture
In the value of the capital invested, in the number of per-
sons occupied, in the annual revenues produced, agriculture
is incontestably the master industry of our national economy.
Without falling into physiocratic exaggerations one can say
that the tillable soil is the great wealth of France.
This explains the extreme importance of agricultural
statistics and the immense interest which attaches to all
measures directed to strengthening its organization and
giving to its figures more solid guaranties of accuracy.
On the day when these statistics shall be firmly established,
we shall be able to say that a great step has been taken
toward the census and evaluation of the wealth of France.
Statistics are established in the Ministry of Agriculture:
I, by special departments {services) with statistics as their
principal function:
II, by the general departments of the ministry.
Special Departments. — ^These departments of service are:
a. rOffice de renseignements agricoles which is the essential
part of the actual organization and forms the third bureau of
the Direction de V enseignement et des services agricoles of the
Ministry of Agriculture.
PRANCE 318
b. The commissions and oflSicials appointed under the law
of August 27, 1902, to collect for the whole area of the coun-
try the elementary data which are to be put to use by the
Office.
The short historical explanation which we have made
above has led us to speak of these two branches of service,
of their mechanism and duties.
We shall content ourselves with citing here the statistical
publications in which their work is summed up.
There are two periodic publications and some non-
periodic publications:
First. The Bulletin Mensuel de I'Office de renseignements
agricoles constitutes every year two volumes of 1,200 pages
each, in which statistics hold a principal place. It dates
from January 1, 1902.
Second. The Statistique agricole annuelle. Here in one
octavo volume of about 300 pages, since 1902, is the fesseintial
statistical document. We have before us the volume relat-
ing to the year 1914, published, in spite of the war, in the
course of 1916. These are the principal divisions of it:
a. Area of the different parts of the territory of France,
b. Table of crops for the year 1914. c. Farm animals; on
December 31, 1914; for all France during the ten years past,
d. Industries for converting farm products, e. Imports
and exports of materials and products of interest to agri-
culture in 1912, 1913 and 1914. f . The supply of provisions
in Paris.
These six divisions form the first part of the volume (196
pp.). They are followed by a second part devoted to retro-
spective tables (127 pages), going back to the beginning of
the nineteenth century and of great interest. We shall cite
notably: the table of the prices of corn in France from 1801
to 1914, distinguishing the calendar year and the agricul-
tural year (August 1, July 31) ; the table of the average price
per kilogram of bread in Paris from 1801 to 1914; the aver-
age price per kilogram of meat (net weight) at the Villette
(cattle market), by kind and by quality, from 1814 to 1914,
314 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The non-periodic publications acquaint us with the re-
sults of special investigations undertaken by the Office des
renseignements. The principal ones, those of the last years,
bear the following titles.
1. Inquiry into the dairy industry in France and abroad.
2. Short account of the trade in agricultural products
(Vol. I, vegetable products; Vol. II, animal products).
3. Cultivation, production and trade of corn in the world.
4. The small rural property (monographic inquiries,
1908-1909).
5. Inquiry concerning agricultural wages.
An amount of work which surely deserves at times certain
criticisms, but which deserves still more the praises of all
those who wish to see the use of statistics develop and
improve.*
Statistics Compiled by the General Departments of Service
of the Ministry of Agriculture. — ^We can cite six examples and
we should refrain from saying that there are not more.
1. The statistics of forestry are compiled by the first
section of the second bureau of the Direction gSnSrale des
Eaux et Forits. It is a considerable work, generally well
done. It has been undertaken twice, at an interval of
thirty years, in 1878 and in 1908. The results in 1878 filled
two small quarto volumes, those of 1908 filled two folio
volumes. It is true that the latter contain a superb col-
lection of forestry charts of 86 dSpartements of France.
2. Hydraulic statistics, with charts,, plans and graphics,
have been drawn up with much care, for several years, by
the department of technical hydraulic studies which is also
subordinate to the Direction gSnSrale des Eaux et Forets.
3. The statistics of the stud {de la monte) of the national
stallions and the licensed stallions are prepared by the Direc-
tion des Haras (breeding studs).
"The great water-powers of France have been, for fifteen years, owing to the
enlightened efforts of the Direction de I'hydravlique and of the Direction gSnirale des
Eaux et Forets, the subject of methodical inquiries the statistical results of which
already fill ten beautiful octavo volumes — ^too little known.
FRANCE 315
4. The Direction des services sanitaires et scientifiques et
de la repression des fraudes publishes annual statistics on its
work and its results.
5. Le Service du Credit, de la CoopSration et de la Mutuality
agricoles publishes the statistics of institutions of agricultural
credit in France and abroad.
6. The same service compiles the statistics of CoopSratives
and of granges (syndicats agricoles).
Ministry of Finance
Let us recall that in this ministry, where everything is
done and measured by figures, statistics are inherent in the
functioning of all departments. And here, happily, where
most often statistics make themselves, they permit of being
easily elaborated, with guaranties of accuracy almost mathe-
matical.
For the Bureau de Staiistique et de Ugislation comparie,
founded by Leon Say in 1876, we refer to the details given
above (see p. 296).
We shall mention here only the most important of the
branches which make statistics an accessory to their prin-
cipal function.
First. The Direction gSnSrale de la ComptabilitS puhlique
deserves without doubt to be placed in the fij-st rank. The
first drafts of the budget, the accounts of receipts and the
Compte gSnSrale de V administration des Finances which it is
its duty to prepare and publish every year are in fact docu-
ments of financial statistics. The most extensive and by
far the most instructive is the Compte gSnSrale. Its publica-
tion was ordered by the law of 19 Nivose an IX (January 9,
1800). The first copy deals with the year 1800. Its point
in time adds singularly to its value. It is remarkable,
moreover, that not all the statistical tables which one finds
there were elaborated by the Direction gSnSrale de la Compt-
abilitS. Some, such as the tables relating to the pubUc
debt in all its forms, were prepared by the Direction de la
dette inscrite.
316 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Second. The five Directions gSnirales, called also RSgies,
the Directions gSnSrales des Contributions directes, des Con-
tributions indiredes, de V Enregistrement et des Domaines, des
Douanes et des Manufactures de I'Etat, are all great producers
of statistics. Their statistical works, as numerous and
varied as their duties, are to be counted among the richest
contributions to the economic statistics of France. The
results of these works, whether periodic or not, are generally
published in the Bulletin de Statistique et de Legislation com-
parSe. They are also, however, sometimes set forth in
special publications. The same is the case with the results of
the great inquiries into developed real estate and undeveloped
real estate undertaken by the Direction ginSrale des Contribu-
tions directes. It is above all the case with customs statistics
{la Statistique douaniere).
The documents of la Statistique douaniere are of such
dimensions that they can hardly be more than summarized
in the Bulletin de Statistique et de Legislation comparSe.
Since they were originated they have always taken the form
of distinct publications. It is fitting to call especial atten-
tion to them here.
La Statistique douaniere, regularly established, goes back,
as we have seen, to the year 1716. Its regular publication
came much later. It is true that Roland under the Conven-
tion (September 21, 1792-October 25, 1795— Tr.) and
Chaptal under the Directoire (October 26, 1795-November
9, 1799 — Tr.) made extensive use of it in the reports stuffed
with figures which they presented on the state of the foreign
commerce of France. But the tables from which these
figures were extracted remained buried in the files of the
Bureau des archives du Commerce. Their first annual pub-
lication dates from 1823. The task of bringing them to
light was entrusted to the Direction g6n6rale des Douanes.
At the present time a special bureau, the third of the first
division of the Direction gSnirale has the duty of preparing
the statistics of commerce and navigation.
The published documents have for a long time been three
FRANCE 317
in number: first, the Tableau ginSral du Commerce et de la
Navigation, annual since 1823. This document was com-
prised in a volume of 70 to 80 pages originally; today it
fills two folio volumes; second, the Tableau gSniral du Com-
merce et de la Navigation, decennial beginning with the year
1827. This remarkable and precious publication dealing
with a period of ten years, 1827-1836, 1837-1846, etc., had
appeared for the seventh time, 1887-1896, when an ill-advised
Minister of Finance decided for reasons of economy to sup-
press it. Thus we have been deprived of the decennial Tab-
leauioTthe years 1897-1906 and 1907-1916. It is permissible
to express the wish that this unfortunate measure may some
day be reversed; third, Documents Statistiques sur le Com-
merce de la France, a monthly bulletin of about two hundred
pages, going back to 1862 and containing, every month, the
results of commerce and navigation for the months that
have gone by in the current year and for the same months
of the two preceding years. What gives it special value is
that it informs the public of facts which are hardly two
months old.
Besides the distinct statistical publications of the depart-
ment of customs we ought to note also :
First. The Tableau gSnSral des PropriStSs de I'Etat the
making of which was ordered by the law of finance of
December 22, 1873, and which appeared December 31, 1875,
in two folio volumes of about one thousand pages each. In
this tableau it is a question only of realties assigned or not
assigned to some department of public service. But their
number is very great and their value enormous. The num-
ber in 1875 amounted to 26,997 and the value to 3,598,000,-
000 francs. The law of 1873 prescribed the establishment
and the pubUcation of annual Tableaux supplimentaires
intended to keep the first tableau up to date. This law was
observed for four years. We possess four volumes of
Tableaux suppUmentaires. But from 1879 on it fell into
desuetude. The elements of the great statistics of real
estate founded in 1873 are not lost. They could be found
318 MEMORIAL VOLUME
again in the dossiers of the department. It would be enough
to wish to use them.
Second. A Bulletin (annuel) de Statistique et de Legisla-
tion comparSe. It dates from 1897. It contains exclusively
all the statistical documents ;which the department of regis-
tration of property publishes in the course of a year through
the medium of the Bulletin (mensuel) de Statistique et de
Legislation comparSe of the Ministry of Finance. It is not,
as one might imagine, a second useless edition of documents
already known. This second edition has the great advan-
tage of grouping in a single convenient volume data scat-
tered through twelve monthly sections and of classifying
them in a rational order which allows the most important
to be thrown into relief. Now, some of the annual statistics
of the department of registration (of property), those not-
ably which apply to the production of taxes, bymaking known
the nature and number of transactions subject to tax as well
as the value of the property which the transactions have
affected, offer from various points of view, the juridic as well
as the economic, considerable interest.*
In publishing this annual Bulletin the department of
registration has, moreover, limited itself to following
the excellent example which la Direction g6n6rale des Con-
tributions had given it, since 1890, by publishing its annual
volume entitled: Renseignements\ Statistiques relatifs aux
contributions diredes et aux taxes assimiUes.
Third. The Direction des Monnaies et MSdaiUes began
to publish in 1896 an annual report on the various opera-
tions of the administration and on the statistics of precious
metals in the world. The origins of this document deserve
to be recalled for twofold reasons.
Its publication had been asked of France (and France
had promised it) by article 11 of the convention concluded
*We take the liberty of citing in this connection the report which we presented
at the meeting of the Institut International de Statigtique held at Berlin in 1903, on
the idle and the applications of financial statistics.
t Unlike the Direction gSnirale des Douanes, the Directions g^^ales des Contribu-
tions diredes and of V enregistremeni have no special bureau of statistics.
FRANCE 319
November 6 between France, Belgium, Italy and Switzer-
land {union Latine). As the fulfilment of the promise was
delayed, it was insistently demanded by the monetary Con-
ference of October, 1893, and then by the Institut Inter-
national de Statistique at its meeting in Berne, in September,
1895.
The program of this report was outlined by Alfred de
Foville, who became Directeur des Monnaies in 1896, with
the authority which belonged to that master of French
statistics and especially of financial and monetary statistics.
The first four reports, those of the years 1896, 1897, 1898
and 1899, were prepared by him and he presented them
himself at the session of the Institut International de Sta-
tistique held at Christiania in September, 1899. It is thanks
to him, undoubtedly, and thanks to his method, carefully
retained by his successors, that this document is considered
by the scholars of the entire world as one of the best of the
kind.
Ministry of Public Works
At the present time one finds no more traces of a central
department of statistics radiating to the activities of the
entire ministry. Not that statistics are not always much
respected there, but the departments which prepare them
are scattered and merged in the three great technical
branches (directions) into which the ministry is divided.
One is justified in regretting this both from the point of view
of science and from that of administration.
Roads, Navigation, Railways and Mines, these are the
four several objects of statistics in the Ministry of Public
Works.
First. Statistics of National Roads are prepared by the
second bureau of the subdivision (Sous-direction) of Roads
and Navigation. The subject matter is twofold. There
are the roads themselves, their diflFerent categories, the cost
of maintenance, their length in each dSpartement. And there
is the amount of traflSc on the roads. The statistics of
320 MEMORIAL VOLUME
traffic (circulation) on the roads are by far the most difficult
to determine. They require a special method of counting
the organization of which is rather delicate and the results
of which can be only approximate. In 1888 the count,
taken in 4,734 posts of observation, was made 28 times dur-
ing an entire day, the days being distributed equally by
seasons and by week.
The publication of the results of this enumeration is not
periodic.
Second. The Statistics of Internal Navigation are pre-
pared by the fourth bureau of the Sous-direction des routes.
Like those of the roads, they have a double object: the
water-ways themselves; the amount of traffic.
Up to 1880 the traffic on navigable waters was enumer-
ated by the Direction gSnSrale des Contributions indirectes of
the Ministry of Finance whose statistical role here was indi-
cated and facilitated by the collection of the navigation
taxes. But when these taxes were suppressed by the law of
February 19, 1880, the statistics of the traffic on navigable
waters naturally reverted to the Ministry of Public Works,
where their organization, also rather delicate, was regulated
by a decree of November 17, 1880.
The results of the statistics of internal navigation are
consigned to an annual publication.
Third. Statistics of Railways belong to the Direction of
railways. Two different bureaus collaborate in them: the
second bureau of the Sous-direction des concessions de che-
mins de fer, and the first bureau of the Sous-direction de
V exploitation. This latter has special charge of the statis-
tics of tariffs.
Here the publications are annual.
Fourth. Statistics of Mineral Industry and of Steam Ma-
chinery in France and Algeria are compiled by the second
bureau of the Direction of mines and are published annu-
ally. They go back to the year 1833. They were estab-
lished in obedience to the Financial Act of April 23, 1833,
and to a circular of August 31 of the same year. The sta-
FRANCE 821
tistics of "sources minSrales," so numerous in France, were
not originally included; they have been added for a number
of years, at the same time being treated in certain special
non-periodic publications.
The statistical field of the Direction of mines has been
enlarged during the last few years by being extended to
include the new facts brought into being by the great devel-
opment of the use of electrical power. This particular
branch of statistics is entrusted to the third bureau of the
Direction of mines.
Ministry of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Telegraphs
Since the statistics of the Foreign Trade of France are
compiled by the Direction gSnSrale des douanes, which is
subordinate to the Ministry of Finance, only the statistics
of Domestic Trade might concern the Ministry of Commerce.
But these statistics do not exist, and such are the immensity
and complexity of the operations of domestic commerce
that one can hardly foresee how they ever can exist, at least
so long as society lives under the regime of freedom of trade
filberts du travail).
So the r6le of the Ministry of Commerce in the matter
of commercial statistics is very limited. It is confined
according to the official formula which fixes the duties of
the second bureau of the Direction des Affaires Commerdales
et Industrielles to: "the centralization and compilation of
the customs statistics of France and of foreign countries
and to the annual publication of resultant documents deal-
ing with a period of ten years : First, a comparative state-
ment of the commercial situation in France; second, the
movement of Commerce and Navigation of the principal
foreign countries."
These documents are published in the Annales du Com-
merce extSrieur, and in the Moniteur Officiel du Commerce.
Among them we shall call attention to the two following
documents which have appeared in special pamphlets :
First. Un siecle de Commerce entre la France et le Roy-
22
322 MEMORIAL VOLUME
aume-Uni. 1 Vol., 138 pp. of tables illustrated by graphics,
1908.
Second. Commerce entre la France et I'ltalie 1861-1910.
1 Vol., 103 pp. tables and graphics, 1910.
The department of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones
which is subordinate at the present time (1914) to the Min-
istry of Commerce prepares a certain number of statistical
documents : First, on the postal delivery service (first bureau
of the Direction de l' exploitation postale); second, on tele-
graphic messages {transmissions) (first bureau of the Direc-
tion de V exploitation tSlSgraphique) ; third, on the telephone
service, its operation and its irregularities (first bureau of
the Direction de V exploitation tSUphonique); fourth, on the
operations of the National Savings Bank, deposits, pay-
ments, and on the depositors, according to age, sex and
occupation.
A small number of these documents are the subject mat-
ter of special publications. Most of them are published in
the Annuaire Statistique de la France.
Ministry of Colonies
This ministry is fortunate in having a central depart-
ment of statistics. It is situated in the Colonial OflBce.
This office was established and organized by a law of March
14, 1899, by a law of February 18, 1904, and by a law of
March 16, 1910. It is divided into three sections. It is
the second which has the task of compiling all Colonial
statistics with the many subjects which are assigned, to
them: commerce, navigation, agriculture, finance, popula-
tion, mines, railways, public health, public instruction,
justice.
The statistical publications emanating from this depart-
ment are very numerous and also very diverse. The num-
ber of distinct publications dealing with all our colonies is
as great as the number of subjects treated. In the last few
years a great eflfort has been made to improve the financial
statistics. One can see the proof of this by running through.
PRANCE 323
among other volumes, the one entitled: "Statistique des
Finances des Colonies frangaises pour les annies 1898-1907
which appeared in 1908.
But to these statistical documents put forth by the cen-
tral department of the Colonial Office must be added the
very important collection of statistics drawn up by the col-
onies themselves. One might say that for several years a
beneficent rivalry between our colonies had been established
in this way. The latest colonies seem determined to equal
or even surpass the oldest. French West Africa and Equa-
torial Africa have already Annuaires Statistiques of a some-
what voluminous format but on the whole very well done.
Algeria has published for a long time numerous statistical
documents generally very complete and very intelligently
composed. The values of the figures which are found there
are no doubt somewhat unequal. The figures of financial
statistics and of customs statistics are as good as those of
France. This is not true of economic statistics. But we
may hope that the progress made in France will be realized
also in Algeria.
The two following documents, issued by the general gov-
ernment, ought especially to be noted :
First, Le Commerce AlgSrien, 2 large volumes in 8vo., 1906.
Second, EnquMe sur les risultats de la colonisation offidelle
de 1871 a 1895, 1906, 2 quarto volumes, the first filled with
tables of figures, charts and diagrams, the second filled with
monographic reports dealing with all the centers of colo-
nization, in which the figures are the principal element.
We may mention, finally, the annual reports of our citi-
zens in the protectorate countries, for Tunis during the last
thirty five years, and for Morocco for hardly two years;
these reports are for the most part made up of statistical
documents.
Ministry of Interior
First, a. La Situation Financiere des dSpartements; b.
La Situation Financiere des communes.
324 MEMORIAL VOLUME
These two annual statistical documents are prepared by
the first and second bureaux of the Direction de I' Adminis-
tration dSpartmentale et communale .
How shall one explain the fact that documents so sharply
characterized are not issued by the Ministry of Finance?
The reason is very simple. The Ministry of Interior is
much better qualified and equipped to compile the finan-
cial statistics of dSpartements and communes because it is,
as it were, the tutor of these two sorts of collectivities and
because all the financial transactions which they perform
pass under its eyes.
Second. La Direction de I' Assistance et de I'Hygiene pub-
lique prepares four kinds of statistical documents:
a. The statistics of the youngest children cared for under
the law of December 23, 1874.
b. The statistics of children receiving public aid and espe-
cially of their mortality.
c. The sanitary statistics of France.
d. The statistics of the personnel of the medical profession
and pharmacists.
This last is quinquennial.
Sanitary statistics form the subject-matter of two pub-
lications, one monthly, the other annual.
Third. La Direction de la Suret6 (second bureau) pub-
lishes the statistics of breeders of carrier pigeons.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
This ministry, it seems, prepares few statistics, and those
that it prepares and publishes from time to time are rather
mediocre.
Thus the idea came to it, one day, of enumerating the
French people living abroad. The results of this enumera-
tion were published in the Journal Officiel of September 25,
1902. But Alfred de Foville with as much verve as author-
ity pointed out grave errors in the method employed and
in the application of it.
FRANCE 325
Ministry of Public Instruction
Of the three great branches into which the departments
of the Ministry of Public Instruction are divided, Direction
de I'Enseignement Supirieur,' Direction de I'Enseignement Sec-
ondaire. Direction de I'Enseignement Primaire, only the third
publishes somewhat regularly, since 18S1, except for an in-
terruption of sixteen years, from 1848 to 1864, the statistics
called de I'Enseignement Primaire, which embrace at once
the personnel (teachers and pupils), buildings, expenses.
In March, 1876, a Commission de Statistique de I'Enseigne-
ment Primaire, of which Levasseur was chairman for thirty
five years, was created to oversee and direct this publica-
tion which from the^first has been quinquennial.
The other two Directions also compile very good statistics,
but they publish them only at rare intervals. One could
find, if occasion demanded, the elements all prepared of
statistical documents of the first rank.
Ministry of Justice
First. We shall -find in this ministry the essential ele-
ment of good statistical organization, that is to say, a central
and specialized department. It is the bureau of statistics^
attached (third bureau) to the Direction des affaires Crimi-
nelles et des graces, but including in its fimctions all judiciary
statistics, civil, commercial, criminal, for Algeria as well as
for France.
We have said enough on this subject in the history of
Statistics in the nineteenth century and need not return to
it here.
Second. L' Administration pinitentiaire, after having been
for a long time under the Ministry of Interior, is today a
department of the Ministry of Justice. That is its true
place. It consists of a Direction comprising three bureaus.
It is the first that has the task of preparing annually the
Statistique PSnitentiaire, the publication of which goes back
to 1852.
326 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Ministry of War
A moment's reflection is enough to discover; in this min-
istry a great department of public service in which there is
abundant material for rich and interesting statistics.
These are the chief statistical documents which it issues:
First. The Compte-rendu annuel des opSrations du recrute-
merit (second bureau of the Direction de Vlnfanterie).
Second. Compte-rendu statistique annuel of the work of
the Conseils de guerre et de rhision (second bureau of the
Direction du contentieux et de la Justice militaire).
Third. Statistique midicale de VarmSe (second bureau of
the Direction du service de SantS). This document, the pub-
lication of which dates back to the law of January 22, 1851,
is today one of the most complete and the most remarkable
perhaps in all French statistics. The figures and graphics
distributed through it are profuse and clear. The method
used in preparing it has been modified often since 1851.
It has just been changed and, this time, it seems, finally
fixed, by an order of June 13, 1913.
Fourth. La Direction du Controle compiles annually the
Statistique des cours commerciaux et des prix paySs by the
military administration and by other public departments.
It is to be feared that this document is neither so well known
nor so much used as it ought to be.
Fifth. Le Service des fonds et des comptes gSnSraux pre-
pares annually a statistical document intended for the Parle-
ment and making known the "situation of the material of
the war reserve."
Ministry of Navy
First. La Statistique de la Justice militaire pour VarmSe
de mer has been compiled and published every three years,
since January 1, 1859, by the Direction militaire des services
de la Flotte.
Second. La Statistique MSdicale de la Marine is prepared
by the administrative bureau of the service central de santS.
Third. L'Office des transports maritimes, connected with
FRANCE 327
the Sous-Secretariat d'Etat de la Marine Marchande, pub-
lishes :
a. la Statistique des naufrages et accidents de mer;
b. la Statistique Sanitaire de la marine marchande.
Fourth. L'Office des Peches has pubUshed since 1866 the
Statistique des pSches maritimes et des Hablissements de piches.
Part III. Desirable and Possible Pbogbess in the
Statistics of France
In the first two parts of this work, apropos the organiza-
tion, past and present, of French statistics, we have tried
to assemble the exact facts, hoping thus to make a useful
contribution to a study of a truly scientific character. Apro-
pos the future organizatioli of French statistics, where it is
a question of criticizing the existing institutions and the
methods employed, we can only express our personal views
and therefore we ask permission to be very brief.
The statistical organization of France was established
very slowly in the course of centuries and athwart the revo-
lutions with which our history is filled. It was built up
like alluvium, incrementum laiens, to use the phrase of the
Roman jurisconsult. Its development and its progress
were realized in a wholly empirical way, as the need of them
made itself felt. No comprehensive view, no systematic
conception has governed it. Most of the gaps which one
can discover today have no other explanation.
The most serious of all perhaps, and in certain respects
the most surprising, is the lack of centralization apd of
specialization of the branches of service entrusted with the
compilation of statistics.
This centralization and this specialization are still inade-
quate. They ought to be gr;eatly strengthened immediately
in every one of our ministries. Every one of them ought,
at the outset, to possess a bureau of statistics, whose duty it
should be to control and centralize the statistical work of
the various special departments of the ministry. But no
328 MEMORIAL VOLUME
less indispensable would be a closer union of all the statistical
bureaus of the different ministries with a single central
department which should thus become, as it were, the brain
of French statistics, which should constitute not simply a
branch of a ministry but an institution of general adminis-
tration and government.
Our existing service, the Statistique gSnSrale de la France
supported by the two Coimcils which surround it, by the
Conseil SupSrieur de Statistique, created in 1885, and the
Conseil de la Statistique g6nSrale, created by the law of August
14, 1907, seems destined to be some day that great institu-
tion which Necker and Lavoisier clearly foresaw.
In another very important matter the actual organization
lacks something eminently desirable. We mean in the
recruiting of the agents who are called to work together in
making statistics.
The service de la Statistique gSnSrale de la France is the
only one which (since 1907) recruits its superior officers, the
calculators, by competitive examination. But nothing is
done to attract and prepare the candidates. The last exam-
ination took place in 1911. The number of candidates was
so small that there were not enough to fill the vacant places.
That is due in great part to the fact that our superannuated
regulations are flatly unfavorable to statistical agents.
These unfortunate persons are treated a little like pariahs.
There is no future open to them in administrative careers.
And even their treatment is inferior to that accorded to
similar categories of clerks in the ministries.
As for the numerous personnel which, in all the ministries,
collaborates in statistical work, no preparation, no special
competence is required of them.
The question of recruiting the statistical force is bound
up intimately with the question of instruction in statistics.
This question, like the first, has been very badly answered
in France.
Instruction in statistics in France is given by a very lim-
ited number of professors, at the FacultS de Droit in Paris
FRANCE 329
and at the Conservatoire des Arts et M&tiers. It is purely
doctrinal in character and is utterly lacking in authority.
But, such as it is, the necessity of making it general is in-
contestable. It ought to be given in all our FacultSs de
Droit. Is it not the natural complement of instruction in
poUtical economy, in labor legislation, in the science of
finance? How can we admit that it should not figure
in the program of courses either in our Ecole naiionale des
Pants et ChaussSes or of our Ecole nationale Supirieure des
Mines?
But what is no more deniable is the necessity of profes-
sional instruction in statistics intended to prepare the future
statisticians of all our departments of public service.
For more than twenty years the Conseil SupSrieur de Sta-
tistique, at our suggestion, has insisted on this double neces-
sity.
Professional instruction in statistics ought to be organ-
ized, in Paris, in two or three courses which might reason-
ably be connected with the Service de la Statistique gSnirale
de la France.
This indicates, in a word, the essential reforms which
seem to be called for in the organization of statistics in
France.
After that, all that can be said is that, first, the utility of
making general the use of fiches and centralized compila-
tion; second, the utility of reestablishing decennial statistics
of customs; third, the utility that there might be in giving
us a great number of statistics which we lack, such, for exam-
ple, as the statistics of emigration and immigration, or the
statistics of hypothecation, for which the forms have been
ready since 1897; fourth, the great interest in the develop-
ment of international statistics and in permanent contact
between our French statisticians and foreign statisticians;
— all these reforms, all these improvements are relatively
secondary. And we may be sure that they will infallibly
be realized on the day when the essential reforms shall be
well under way.
GERMANY
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OFFICIAL
STATISTICS IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE
By Dr. Eugene Wurzburgbr
Privy Councillor, Director of the Royal Statistical State Office in Dresden
I, Historical Development
In its time the old German realm which was dissolved in
1806 did not know of official statistical investigations,
although in the states constituting it numerous tendencies
toward such undertakings were already at hand. In these
states, and especially in the cities {Jreie Reichstddte) which
likewise formed states, enumerations of populations for
purposes of administration took place in early days; and a
few of them have in recent times been made scientifically
useful, for instance in Biicher's work "The Population of
Frankfurt a. M. in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. "
Tables showing property in land and live stock reach far
back into the middle ages; the results of the queries, how-
ever, were not published but kept secret, and even today the
archives to a large extent hide unlifted treasures.
The work by Biisching of 1785 "Vorbereitung zurgriind-
lichen und nutzlichen Kenntnis der geographischen Beschaf-
f enheit und Staatsverfassung der europaischen Reiche, "* is
to be regarded as the first publication of official statistical
material that had been critically sifted.
Inquiry into the conditions of population, based according
to the English model on the church registers, was begun by
Siissmilch in his book of 1741 called "Betrachtungen iiber
die gottliche Ordnung in den Veranderungen des mensch-
lichen Geschlechts aus der Geburt, dem Tode und der Fort-
*Preparation for a Thorough and Useful Knowledge of the Geographic Condi-
tion and Constitutions of the European Countries.
834 MEMORIAL VOLUME
pflanzung desselben erwiesen."* In the preface to it, the
philosopher Christian WolflF points out "how the theories
of probability can be made useful in human life."
The first statistical state office within the boundaries of
the present German Empire was founded in Prussia in the
year 1805. "Statistical-topographical" bureaus were estab-
lished in Bavaria in 1808 and in Wiirttemburg in 1820.
Already in 1817 topography was made a separate branch in
Bavaria, while in Wiirttemburg an association of official
character, which since 1822 had been more occupied with
statistics than the bureau just mentioned, was united with
it in 1856. In Saxony, also, a systematic statistical activity
was carried on by an oflScially subsidized association founded
in 1831 and whose bureau was taken over by the state in
1850. The other separate states followed these examples
in turn, so that today only some of the smallest of them are
without their own statistical bureaus.
Soon after these beginnings toward official organization
of statistics in the separate states, the need made itself felt
of certain joint investigations, not for the benefit of that
very loose structure, the German Union, which lasted until
1866, but to meet the demands of the German Tariff Union
which had existed alongside of it since 1833. The founda-
tion of this Union by Prussia was chiefly due to the acci-
dental circumstance that the introduction of frontier tariffs
in place of the earlier internal duties had been made difficult
for Prussia by the parts of other federated states which were
surrounded by its domain, in case these had not joined in
her tariff policy. Later on, however, the Tariff Union was
expanded beyond the needs determined in this manner, so
that finally almost all the territories of the later German
Empire belonged to it.
To be sure, the joint statistics of the Tariff Union were
obtained solely with an eye to revenue administration and
were prepared in its central bureau. But from the outset
*Reflections on the Divine Order in the Mutations of the Human Race as Indi-
cated by its Birth, Death and Propagation.
GERMAN EMPIRE 335
the statistics included not only the goods traflfic with foreign
countries and its yield in revenue, for uniform enumerations
of population became necessary as the income from the
tariffs and the common imposts was to be distributed among
the separate states according to the number of persons
contained in their populations. Therefore, from 1834 and
until 1867, triennial enumerations of population were made.
Moreover, the need arose of being able to gauge the influence
of revenue political measures upon the business activity of
the population. This led to an expansion of the population
enumerations of 1846 and 1861 so as to include statistical
inquiries concerning occupation and industry. There were
also introduced current statistics of shipping as well as of
the production of mines, salt and smelting works.
When the German Union was dissolved in 1866 and the
"North German Union" was founded, which consisted of
Prussia and the north German middle and small states, the
central bureau of the Tariff Union continued on; and until
the foundation of the Empire in the year 1871 a "federal
council" and a parliament of the Tariff Union still existed
in addition to the federal council and parliament of the
North German Union. The necessity that had arisen
through the new conditions for an expansion of the joint
statistics was particularly felt by the Tariff Union whose
field was greater than that of the North German Union; and
thus it came about that the federal council of the Tariff
Union resolved, on December 20, 1869, to establish a com-
mission charged with the task of planning the wider develop-
ment of the joint statistics. Representatives of statistics
from the larger states were called to this commission. It
convened four times for protracted meetings consisting of a
total of 81 sessions. Two of them took place in 1870 and
two in 1871, after the war with France. Separate sessions
to confer about the special affairs concerning only the North
German Union were held by the members of the commission
who belonged to it. The foundation of the German Empire,
which had occurred in the meantime, of itself necessitated
336 MEMORIAL VOLUME
an enlargement of the existing plans in regard to the joint
statistics, and when the central bureau of the Tariff Union
which hitherto had been occupied with them ceased its
activity on March 31, 1871, the question was taken up of
establishing a special oflfice for the joint statistics. In sub-
mitting the results of its deliberations to the federal council
of the present Empire, the commission, in its report of May
26, 1871, proposed (although this did not really belong to its
task), before the conclusion of its work, the foundation and
establishment of a central governmental office for statistics.
The proposition was formulated as follows: "The material,
in part already fixed and partly prospective, which is to be
dealt with statistically at the seat of the central administra-
tion is so comprehensive that the establishment of a special
and technical government office is necessary for this purpose.
The office should not be a mere tabulating and editing bureau
but have the character of an institute provided with a sci-
entific personnel."
Of the thirteen signers of this report one is still alive,
namely, the honorary member of the American Statistical
Association, G. v. Mayr, in Munich.
The report was accompanied by an opinion by Rumelin
(" On the Foundation and Establishment of a Governmental
Office for German Statistics"), sketching the lines of devel-
opment that the statistics in the German Empire should take
in a manner which has been realized as to its most important
principles although not in all detail.
The basic idea was a threefold division of the material.
All the work of statistical offices was to be placed in three
classes which Rumelin designated as central, federal and
special statistics. For the character of the now federated
states demanded, as the former union of states had done, a
joint and parallel activity on the part of the central and state
statisticians which subsequently has attained a high degree
of systematic development.
The central statistics consist of the work undertaken solely
and directly by the officials of the Empire without any
GERMAN EMPIRE 337
cooperation by the statistical offices of the separate states.
At the outset only the statistics of foreign commerce be-
longed under this head, the materials for which were sent
from the revenue offices to the government office.
The federal statistics are those collected by the separate
states according to common principles established for the
greater part by the federal council and worked into uniform
tables which are transmitted to the imperial office and com-
piled by it for the Empire as a whole and thereupon pub-
lished. To the federal statistics should belong the great
enumerations, and the statistics of the movement of popu-
lation, so far as they are gathered on a uniform basis, and
also the regular census of agriculture and industry.
Finally, the special statistics consist of those that are
collected by the individual states on their own initiative and
without reference to the Empire. To this class belong sta-
tistics covering administrative, business, and cultural con-
ditions in all the fields that are subject to independent con-
trol by the separate states within their own domains.
This threefold division of official statistics, considering
the situation at the time of the foundation of the Empire,
was almost exhaustive, for the fourth class, the community
statistics which was added later, had as yet been developed
in but a few of the large municipalities. Later on, however,
they were cultivated in numerous cities through their own
communal statistical offices, and in increasing measure
according to common principles.
The center of statistics in the German Empire is the
Imperial Statistical Office which becanie operative on July
21, 1872, in conformity with the resolution adopted by the
federal council on March 9 of the same year. Its personnel
consisted of a director, two associates, and eight bureau
officials. From the beginning the office had three divisions
(population and general statistics, agriculture and industry,
foreign commerce), of which one was immediately under
the director, while both of the others were conducted by
professionally trained counsellors (associate members).
23
838 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Since that time, this oflSce has been enormously expanded
as appears from the fact that, according to the budget of
1914, there were, beside the director, 27 professionally trained
officials (as against two when it was founded) and 387 other
permanent officials (as against the former eight), and finally
a variable number, of non-permanent clerks but always
amounting to several hundred, so that the total personnel
at the present time exceeds eight hundred. And as the
development of the other official statistical bureaus has not
been retarded by the expansion of the imperial office, but
their field of activity has been increased more or less, it can
be asserted that while statistics in Germany in the eighteenth
century were characterized by theories founded on meager
practical results, their development in the new era is almost
synonymous with official statistics; and a history of official
statistics is therefore at the same time a history of statistics
in Germany generally speaking; for the official statistics
have opened up statistically most of the fields to which
their attention has been directed.
II. Organization and Activity of the Statistical Offices
Generally
The following introductory remarks will serve to make
clear the outward significance of official statistics in the
German Empire. In addition to the Imperial Statistical
Office all the larger, middle and some of the small federated
states have independent statistical state bureaus — a total
of seventeen. They are the following :
Year when
State. Designation of Office. Established.
1. Kingdom of Prussia Royal Statistical State Office in
Berlin 1805
2. Kingdom of Bavaria Royal Statistical State Office in
Munich 1808
3. Kingdom of Saxony Royal Statistical State Office in
Dresden 1851
4. Kingdom of Wilrttemberg Royal Statistical State Office in
Stuttgart 1820
GERMAN EMPIRE
6. Grand-duchy of Baden
6. Grand-duchy of Hessen
7. Grand-duchy of Mecklenburg-
Schwerin
8. Grand-duchy of Saxe-
Weimar
Duchy of Saze-Altenburg
Principalities of
Reuss OX.
Reuss Y.L,
Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt
Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen
9. Grand-duchy of Oldenburg
10. Duchy of Braunschweig
11. Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen
12. Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
13. Duchy of Anhalt
14. Free City of Lttbeck
15. Free City of Bremen
16. Free City of Hamburg
17. Imperial Domain of Alsace-
Lorraine
Grand-ducal Statistical State Of-
fice in Karlsruhe 1852
Grand-ducal Central Office for
State Statistics in Darmstadt 1861
Grand-ducal Statistical State Of-
fice in Schwerin 1851
Thflringian State Statistical Office
in Weimar 1864
Grand-ducal State Statistical Of-
fice in Oldenburg 1855
Ducal State Statistical Office in
Braunschweig 1853
Statistical Bureau of the Ducal
Ministry oiState in Meiningen 1875
Statistical Bureau of the Ducal
State Ministry in Gotha 1858
Ducal State Statistical Office in
Dessau 1867
Statbtical Office of the Free and
Hansa City 1871
Statistical Office of Bremen 1867
Statistical Bureau and Bureau of
the Central Election Com-
mission 1866
Statistical State Office for Alsace-
Lomune in Strassburg 1872
Of these seventeen oflBces, ten are each under a director
whose chief occupation it is to direct it. In Liibeck the
director also holds other positions, and in Hessen, the Thtir-
ingian office, Braunschweig, Meiningen, Coburg-Gotha and
Anhalt, the statistical service is in charge of officials holding
other state offices and who perform this service as a sub-
sidiary occupation; yet the central office for Hessen employs
some scientific officials in the chief bureau. The smallest
states, namely the Grand-duchy of Mechlenburg-Strelitz
and the principalities of Waldeck, Schaumburg-Lippe and
Lippe, are without specially organized statistical offices.
340 MEMORIAL VOLUME
So far as Waldeck is concerned, the entire administration,
including the statistical function, is in charge of Prussia,
while in the other three states the requisite statistical work
rests with the general state government.
Furthermore, forty five municipaUties support their own
statistical offices, namely:
Aachen, Altona, Augsburg, Barmen, Berlin, Schoneberg,
Wilmersdorf, Braunschweig, Breslau, Cassel, Charlotten-
burg, Chemnitz, Coin, Crefeld, Danzig, Dortmund, Dresden,
Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Elberfeld, Essen, Frankfurt a. M.,
Freiburg, Gorlitz, Halle, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Kbnigs-
berg, Leipzig, Linden, Magdeburg, Mainz, Mannheim,
Metz, Miilheim, Munchen, Neukblln, Nurnberg, Plauen,
Posen, Stettin, Strassburg, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden.
Of these municipal offices, thirty nine are under the leader-
ship of professional statisticians. The oldest municipal
statistical office is that of Berlin which was established as
early as 1862. The large majority date from more recent
times, for twenty four of these forty five municipal statistical
offices have been established since the year 1900. To these
should be added the only provincial-statistical office, namely,
that of the district of Teltow which contains a part of the
environs of the city of Berlin.
All of these offices are occupied not with one branch of
statistics alone, for instance the registration of births, mar-
riages and deaths, or exclusively or chiefly with medical
statistics, but are bureaus for general statistics of the most
varied kind.
Only in isolated instances do the municipal offices in
question engage in non-statistical work. For instance, in
Prussia and Saxony, it is their duty to publish annually the
lists of the markets that are to take place the following year
in the different parishes, and in some municipalities these
offices prepare the general printed reports in regard to the
municipal administration. The only office which, besides
statistics, is occupied with other tasks on a large scale is that
of Wurttemburg, which is also the center of information and
GERMAN EMPIRE 341
history of the country as well as of topographical work. This,
however, is rather a matter of form, for the personnel of the
statistical division is in fact not engaged in other tasks.
The expenditures of the Imperial Statistical OflSce amount
annually to more than two and one-half million marks, those
of the other state statistical bureaus to two million marks,
while the outlay of the municipal statistical offices is to be
reckoned at one million marks, making a total annual ex-
penditure of five and one-half million marks, not counting
special appropriations for censuses of population and other
statistical investigations which are not of annual occurrence.
The permanent personnel occupied at the statistical offices
numbers 1,500, among whom are 130 to 140 scientifically
trained officials and about 650 calculators and clerks; the
remaining 700 are assistants who are engaged as occasion
demands and whose total number at times is considerably
higher.
There is in addition the so-called "unreleased" {unaus-
geloste) statistics that are compiled by other departments
than the statistical bureaus. They hold a place of no incon-
siderable importance among the statistics of the Empire as
well as among those of the federated states and municipali-
ties, although less so than in many other countries where
the concentration of work in the statistical offices is not so
developed. The statistics under consideration are limited
to departments which have need of appending statistical
information to the reports of their own administrative
activities for purposes of illustration or because it is inti-
mately related to their work.
The progress which the official statistics in the German
Empire have made since they were organized has taken
place, one may confidently assert, exclusively in the fields
that are occupied by the statistical offices proper and this
progress manifests itself by an expansion of their activity in
intensive as well as extensive directions.
The peculiarity of the wide distribution of statistics in
the German Empire lies in that it does not only extend
342 MEMORIAL VOLUME
horizontally to different coordinated administrations, but
much more in that it penetrates vertically the organs of the
Empire, the states and the municipalities, which are founded
one upon the other, and therefore this distribution has as its
indispensable premise an intimate relation of the partici-
pating factors which perhaps is of less significance under
other systems of dividing statistical activities.
The division of work among the statistical oflSces partici-
pating in different investigations is not strictly systematic,
but in course of the development of affairs it has become
quite complicated.
Even the Imperial Statistical Office is by no means the
only one engaged in the "central" statistics which it com-
piles. As the original data in a large part are collected not
only through officials of the imperial administration but
through those of the separate states, the latter are in posi-
tion to copy the material or make extracts before transmit-
ting it to the Imperial Statistical Office and thus of dealing
with it for their domain more intensively according to terri-
tory or contents than is possible for the Imperial Office.
Since differences would arise in the results of the compilations
made by the Empire and by the federated states provided
tests of the material by one or the other should lead to
changes and additions, the agreement has been reached in
many instances that the imperial and the federated state
offices shall make mutually known the outcome of such
tests. The schedules used in such investigations are for the
greater part determined and provided by the Imperial
Office, and their expansion through additional questions on
behalf of the separate states is therefore as a rule not feasible.
Although in recent times many branches of social and
industrial statistics have been taken up by the Imperial
Office, "federal" statistics constitute the most diverse part
of its work; they include, as already stated, large enumera-
tions in which the whole population is required to fill out
the schedules.
|'{^ Since the very beginning of imperial statistics and in con-
GERMAN EMPIRE 343
formity with 'the conference mentioned which may be re-
garded as having given birth to them, arrangements have
been made with the leaders of the statistical oflfices of the
Empire and the federated states for conventions at which the
plans for the governmental regulations in regard to the
separate investigations in the field of federal statistics
are thoroughly discussed before being submitted to the
federal council. These conventions, which formerly were
occasional affairs, have been held annually since 1897; and
all the more important federal statistical investigations are
thoroughly weighed by them before the federal council
orders the work to be undertaken. For the rest, these con-
ventions have in many respects become an important factor
in the imperial statistics, for to them are due not only num-
erous suggestions in regard to the regulations of the federal
council, but in some fields new comparative work in imperial
statistics has been instigated solely through the means of
cooperation agreed upon by the leaders of the statistical
offices who participated in these conferences.
The directors of the municipal statistical offices have held
joint meetings since 1897 chiefly for the purpose of reaching
the greatest possible uniformity in the work they carry on
independently of the state administrations. This work lies
principally within the field of population, building and
dwelling, and community finance statistics. Conferences
of this sort have latterly been held once a year.
Another feature of the German official statistics is that
with few exceptions the investigations are not fixed by legis-
lation but are carried out by way of administration through
regulations made by the federal council; and in conformity
with such regulations the governments of the separate states
likewise arrange through administrative edicts the details for
executing the work. In general, an imperial law is adopted
only relative to investigations in which the population is
bound under penalty to fill out the schedules and for the
compilation of which the federated states, when federal
statistics are in question, receive an indemnification for
344 MEMORIAL VOLUME
costs from the imperial treasury. This was the case in the
three enumerations of occupation and industry for the years
1882, 1895 and 1907. Aside from this, only the statistics of
foreign commerce are governed by laws, and in the legisla-
tion concerning sea fisheries statistics are also provided for.
There are no other laws prescribing statistical investigations.
It is not at all necessary to provide penalties in case the
requisite statements should be refused, because the popu-
lation generally recognizes the importance of furnishing
correctly the information required for statistical purposes
and almost without exception give it without being coerced.
The conviction that administrative statistics demand an
activity of a peculiar kind which appropriately should be
entrusted to a specially organized bureau led to the estab-
lishment of statistical offices; but the full advantage of
properly formulated statistical technique of production for
the whole field will only grow out of the existence of these
offices when arrangements are niade that cause all work
suitable for the statistical office to be discharged by it, and
when the leadership of the offices as well as of the large divi-
sions under them is given to persons with sufficient insight
into administration and who completely master statistical
practice. These demands are not yet met everywhere nor
in a consistent manner.
With reference to the allotment of work that advanta-
geously can be turned over to the statistical office, of which,
as already mentioned, business statistics of the separate
departments are not necessarily a part, there is a certain
natural tendency in the opposite direction. It arises from
the circumstance that the statistical offices of the Empire
and of the federated states are subject to a single depart-
ment, namely, the Imperial Statistical Office in the Depart-
ment of the Interior, while the offices of the federated states
are under some ministry (usually that of the Interior, in
Wurttemburg that of Finance), and that these superiors
are inclined to make use of the forces of the office chiefly
for the advantage of their special department. On the
GERMAN EMPIRE 345
other hand, the personal initiative of the leader of the sta-
tistical oflSce is naturally of great importance as it probably
everywhere, to a certain extent, influences the allotment of
work to the office.
In some states special commissions have the task of bring-
ing about uniform cooperation between the different branches
of the state administration and the official statistical work.
In Prussia, the "Central Statistical Commission" functions
as a statistical council. It is composed of representatives
of different ministries and the Imperial Department of the
Interior, the President and a second member of the Sta-
tistical State Office, three members of both houses of the
Landtag, and of professional statisticians. The Statistical
Council of Bavaria is made up of representatives of the
different ministries, the director of the Statistical State
Office, four representatives of agriculture, industry and
commerce, and one or more representatives of science. In
both of the states mentioned, the statistical councils meet
only occasionally and not very often. This is also true of
the statistical commission in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In
Wiirttemburg permanent delegates of the ministries are
appointed to the Statistical State Office, and in Hessen
representatives of the different administrative departments
are members of the Central Office for State Statistics and
thus maintain the relations between the administration and
statistics. Meanwhile, the central statistical commissions
which were established in the middle of the last century in
some other German states (Baden, Oldenburg) have gone
out of existence.
A word must be said about the internal organization of
the statistical offices. As in the case of the directors of
the Imperial Statistical Office, so also, are the leaders of the
larger bureaus assisted by a number of scientifically trained
co-workers. That so far no general principles have been
evolved governing the selection of these assistants as well as
the selection of the leaders themselves, is due to the cir-
cumstance that no actual definitely regulated occupational
346 MEMORIAL VOLUME
training of statisticians is provided for in the German high
schools in the same manner as for administrative officials,
judges, physicians, etc. The reason of it lies in the nature
of statistics themselves, for although there may be a differ-
ence of opinion as to whether statistics form an independent
science or only constitute a method, it cannot be doubted
that to exercise the calling of a statistician requires a certain
amount of knowledge and aptitude which cannot be obtained
as the result of any other vocational training. The most
appropriate manner of providing a future generation of
trained statisticians would, therefore, be to introduce special
courses and perhaps also special examinations for statisticians
at the universities. But such a plan can only be realized
when the scientific positions in statistical offices become so
numerous that many students see an opportunity in the
statistical occupation.
Yet, after all, the increase and expansion of statistical
offices have led many young people, who, during their stu-
dent years, had prepared themselves for other careers, to
enter a statistical office in order to learn its activities and
then to become sufficiently familiar with them to gain
recognition as professional statisticians. The scientific
forces of the municipal statistical offices are as a rule recruited
among the different municipal administrations from persons
who have been trained in this manner; but in the state
offices cases of this kind occur comparatively seldom. As
a rule the governments prefer to ffil the positions of leaders
and assistants with persons who have shown their qualifica-
tions in other administrative offices, and of whom it can be
assumed that they will soon attain the necessary statistical
experience through practice. When a large number of
places are in question, it is customary to reserve some for
representatives of certain scientific branches, the knowledge
of which is of value in dealing with special matters conaing
before the office. Thus, for instance, in several offices
physicians are in charge of the statistics of morbidity, mor-
tality, etc., and academically trained calculators look after
the compilation of agricultural statistics.
GERMAN EMPIRE 347
It follows from the nature of the statistical offices as ad-
ministrative organs that their production, that is, the sta-
tistical material collected by them, must benefit the public
administration. But, as regards the manner in which it is
utilized by the administrations, a twofold distinction is to
be made. If an investigation is undertaken because some
concrete object (for instance, the preparation of a legislative
bill) postulates statistical bases that are not yet at hand but
to be gained through the investigation, then an adequate
utilization of its results for administrative purposes is guar-
anteed. The case is different in respect to most of the
regular tasks of the statistical offices — ^the investigation of
periodical conditions and current movements. Here the
previously determined object is lacking, and it cannot be
foreseen whether on the whole the administration will have
an opportunity to make use of the results of this or that
investigation corresponding to the trouble and cost involved.
But, on the other hand, just this indefiniteness makes it
possible that needs which could not have been predicated in
advance may lead to a thorough utilization of the results
and that, therefore, the limits set beforehand both to the
investigation and the compilation show themselves to be too
narrow in the individual case. It is thus left to the pre-
vision of the leaders of the statistical offices to test in season
how far the compilation, and in many instances the investi-
gation itself, can be expanded beyond the momentarily
fixed demands without exceeding the bounds created by the
financial means of the office and other circumstances. Mean-
while this possibility occurs for the statistical offices only
when they have obtained the original data of inquiry for
compilation, and for the Imperial Statistical Office con-
sequently in case of "central" statistics.
But precisely in respect to the subjects belonging to
"central" statistics the compass of the investigation and
compilation is closely circumscribed by existing regulations,
so that in this direction the initiative of the Imperial Sta-
tistical Office is given but little scope. Not so with the
348 MEMORIAL VOLUME
oflSces of the federated states. In regard to the federal
undertakings which constitute the most diverse part of the
German statistics, it is their duty to formulate the schedules
for their respective states, to carry out the investigations
and to complete their material. Thus in many respects
they are in a position to expand their work beyond the limits
prescribed for the joint imperial statistics. This holds
good when the interrogatory is amplified during the investi-
gation itself by means of so-called supplementary questions,
relative to the results of these questions. Furthermore, the
statements obtained by the different offices frequently are
still more minutely partitioned, that is, distributed into
more groups than required for the purpose of the joint sta-
tistics. Then, too, the results of different questions are
often presented in more combinations than in a case of the
imperial statistics.* Finally, it is almost universally the
custom that the separate states prepare the tables for the
smaller local units of administration, while for the purposes
of imperial statistics only a summary for the entire federated
state or for its larger districts is required and published.
Such special results of the activity of the statistical office
of a single federated state have repeatedly shown themselves
to be useful so far as they actually yield more thorough
information than that at hand for the Empire; and this holds
good not only of the state in question but of the country at
large, as such information has the same significance for the
latter as the statistical surrogates obtained by the so-called
sampling method. The like is true of the special statistics
proper, that is, statistics collected for particular purposes,
and also true of many of the undertakings by the municipal
statistical offices which enlarge the enumerations to be made
on behalf of the state so far as the municipal domain is
concerned.
*For instance, when at censuses of population tables are called for showing the
states to which the inhabitants belong and the countries of their birth, a distinction
is made in many federated states in regard to the countries of birth for persons of
each single state relationship.
GERMAN EMPIRE 349
There is, to be sure, one obstacle to the full utilization of
all these refined statistical inquiries: it is made difficult by
the almost complete absence of reference works which afford
easily accessible information about the existence of such and
such data. For one field — statistics of the movement of
population — ^I have made a compilation of this kind which
appeared as a supplement to the Allgemeines Statistisches
Archiv, 1909. In most fields of statistics, however, the
results of the activity of the state and municipal offices in
federal and special investigations that complement the
imperial statistics are so scattered that they can only be
taken advantage of and, as a matter of fact, are used in a
wholly insufficient degree. The joint regulation of these
branches of statistics, which already Riimelin had in view in
his program referred to above, has not yet been accomplished.
Self-evidently it is difficult to pronounce a general judg-
ment about these matters. But also among the imperial
statistical publications only those can be said to enjoy a
thorough use that are of immediate practical significance in
details, for instance, the statistics of foreign commerce, and
the criminal statistics. For the rest it cannot be denied
that as well in the scientific fields which should benefit by
an intensive use of statistical results, their utilization is in a
large part quite sparing and incontestably out of keeping with
the extraordinary abundance of the statistical production.
The reason for this condition is likewise to be sought in the
insufficient representation of statistics at the high schools.
With few exceptions they do not afford the students a sys-
tematic introduction to statistics which still have to attain
their proper place among the subjects of instruction at the
high schools.
On this account, one of the earliest tasks of the German
Statistical Association, founded in 1911, was to take steps
toward a more general instruction in statistics at the high
schools.
Because of the naany-sidedness of the official statistics
in the German Empire it is impossible to present with any
350 MEMORIAL VOLUME
degree of completeness the diflferent branches covered by the
activity of the numerous statistical offices, and merely to
give a list of their publications would require a dispropor-
tionate amount of space.
The publications comprehended under imperial statistics
are issued chiefly by the Imperial Statistical Office in the
form of different original works: Statistics of the German
Empire, which contain the most complete statistics, at least
one volume being devoted to each branch; the Quarterlies
which, aside from certain definite statistics of lesser com-
pass, afford preliminary information about subjects dealt
with in the Statistics of the German Empire; the annual
Statistics of the Freight Movement on the German Railways,
which must be regarded as a supplement to the publication
of the State Railway Department entitled Statistics of the
Operating Railways of Gerrriany; the monthly reports on
foreign commerce which customarily are accompanied by
data in regard to prices and fisheries; finally, the publications
of the Division for Labor Statistics, consisting of a monthly
Government Labor Journal, and of different separate studies.
The Statistical Year Book and the more comprehensive
Statistical Hand Book which so far has appeared once (1907)
in two parts, are not designed to present original work but
to be a summary of what already has been published.
So far as the federated states are concerned, the statistical
offices of Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony each publishes a
separate Zeitschrift as well as original works which, in con-
formity with the Statistics of the German Empire, contain the
results of the larger statistical investigations. Similar
organs are published by the statistical offices in all the
federated states, and many in addition issue a year book or
hand book. The municipal statistical offices in greater
part publish monthly reports on different statistical results
but also in several instances year books, Communications
(Mitteilungen) and the like. The Statistical Year Book of
German Cities, published at the instigation of the Municipal
Statistical Conference, is an important document in the
GERMAN EMPIRE 351
service of comparative communal statistics and covers
cities with more than 50,000 population. This year book
does not, as otherwise is the rule, form a mere compilation
of numerical statements, but every section is accompanied
by an explanatory text dealing in part with the origin of the
statistics in question and in part with the significance of the
numbers. This is the type of statistical year book had in
view by the two most eminent representatives of statistics
in Germany among those who have already passed away,
namely, E. Engel, director first of the Saxon and later
(until 1882) of the Prussian Statistical State Office, and R.
Boeckh, who was a director of the Statistical Office of the
City of Berlin from 1875 to 1903, The year book of Berhn
has remained true to this type until the present day.
A list of all these organs of publication is to be found in
the Deutsches Statistisches Zentralblatt for 1909, No. 2, with
supplements in No. 5, also in No. 4 for 1910.
At jubilees and on other occasions some of the statistical
offices have issued collective publications dealing in a more
or less comprehensive manner with the history and status
of their activity at the time. Such memoirs are:
1. The Imperial Statistical Office. The Field of Work of the Imperial Statistical
Office as it Existed in the Year 1918. 40-666 pp. Berlin, 191S. (Vol. 201
of the Statistics of the German Empire.)
i. Kingdom of Prusiia. The Royal Statistical Office During the First Century of its
Existence, 1806-1905. Memorial publication. Three parts in two volumes
(XII, 271; VIII, 161 and XIX pp. with 116 colored plates). Berlin. Pub-
lished by the Royal Statistical State Office, 1909.
3. Kingdom of Bavaria. 1. History and Organization of OffixAal Statistics in
the Kingdom of Bavaria. 336 pp. Mimich, 1896.
2. History of the Newer Bavarian Siaiistics (Contri-
butions to the statistics of the Kingdom of
Bavaria, part 86). 277 pp. Munich, 1914.
4. Kingdom of Saxony. 1. The Statistical Bureau of the Kingdom of Saxony
During the First Fifty Years of its Existence.
Memorial Publication. 96 pp. Leipzig, 1881.
2. The Royal Statistical State Bureau from 1876 to
1890. A report of administration. Journal
of the Royal Statistical Bureau of Saxony, 36,
1890. Dresden, 1890.
352 MEMORIAL VOLUME
5. The Kingdom of WiirUemberg. The Problems and Work of the Royal Statistical
State Office. (Year Books for Statistics and Landeskunde in Wttrttemberg,
1909, 1.)
6. Orand-Duchy of Hessen. The History of Hessian Statistics and Their Qffieiai
Organization. In Commenwration of the 50th Anniversary of the Grand Ducal
Hessian Central Office for State Statistics. 72 pp. Darmstadt, 1911.
7. Grand-Duchy of Oldenburg. The Statistical Office of the Grand-Duchy of Olden-
burg During the First Fifty Years of its Existence. (Conrad's Jahrbticher fUr
NationalSkonomie und Statistik, series III, Vol. 28.)
8. The Duchy of Braunschweig. The First Fifty Years of the Statistical Bureau of
the Duchy of Braunschweig-LUneburg, 1854 to 1904. (Contributions to the
Statistics of the Duchy of Braunschweig, part 18, Braunschweig, 1904.)
Of the non-oflScial publications dealing with the entire
field of activity of the statistical offices in Germany there
should be mentioned (1) the great work of more than 1800
pages which was presented in 1911 to G. von Mayr on the
occasion of his seventieth birthday; (2) the Statistics in Ger-
many which consists of fifty two separate presentations of
different subjects and deals with all three branches — ^govern-
mental, state and communal statistics; and (8) in regard
to the statistical activity of communes, the supplementary
volume to Allgemeines Statistisches Archiv, Vol. 6, entitled
German Municipal Statistics. It relates, however, to a some-
what remote year.
III. The Subjects of Statistical Investigation
Even if it is not possible to consider all details, at least a
glance must be taken at the more important subjects of the
joint (central or federal) imperial statistics,* with some
attention to the special statistics.
Among the subjects taken over for central treatment,
meaning thereby that the original data are dealt with by the
imperial offices and not by the state offices, the statistics of
foreign commerce are the most comprehensive and, as
*At this point I must express my thanks to the directors of the statistical state
offices for their often laboriously prepared answers to the questions which I put
to them for the purposes of the following survey; I also wish to thank Dr. Claus
and Dr. Huth of the Imperial office for the thorough compilation they furnished at
my request of the subjects of the pubUcations of that office.
GERMAN EMPIRE 353
already stated, they date from the time of the Tariff Union.
Their present form is based upon the law of February 7,
1906, relative to the statistics of goods traffic with foreign
countries. The receiver, shipper, and transporter are in
duty bound to transmit a notification to the proper place of
report, stating the kind, quantity, place of origin, and desti-
nation of the goods. According to the resolution of the
federal council of February 11, 1911, the report must state
the value of all goods exported — ^previously only in some
cases — and also in regard to some goods that are imported.
In the case of goods whose value it is not obligatory to de-
clare, unit prices are fixed for the different kind of goods by
the aid of a commerical statistical council consisting of per-
sons trained in agriculture, commerce, industry and science.
For imports, the value of the goods is considered to be the
one they have on passing the boundary, that is to say, minus
duty, freight charges, etc. On the basis of the statements
received at the places of information, reports must be made
out every ten days, sometimes at briefer intervals, and
transmitted to the Imperial Statistical Office.
The reports received in the Imperial Statistical Office are
compiled by the aid of Hollerith machines. The goods are
valued according to the Statistical Goods Registers which
(since January 1, 1912) divide those belonging to exports into
1,639 and those belonging to imports into 1,875 numbers.
The origin and destination is noted for the country in which
the article was grown or manufactured, and as the place of
destination the country for whose use it is destined.
The statistics are issued monthly and annually; in addition,
the import and export of different cereals and some other
important goods such as cotton, coal, etc., are published
every ten days in the Reichsanzeiger.
The annual statistics of ocean shipping, which also date
from the time of the Tariff Union, are likewise compiled in the
Imperial Statistical Office; and their present form is based
upon the resolutions of the federal council of June 27, 1907,
and of June 13, 1912. The same office compiles the monthly
24
354 MEMORIAL VOLUME
reports of the Imperial Department of Canals in regard to
the traflBc on the Baltic Canal, while the statistics of traflBc
on inland waters, which have been considerably expanded
since 1909, are dealt with as federal statistics and in such
a manner that every stopping place on a river or a lake is
included.
The statistics of population in the widest sense of the
term are left almost exclusively to federal treatment, so
that the Imperial Statistical Office only has to do with the
compilation and publication of summaries for the Empire.
This is true of the schedules relating to present conditions,
that is, the enumeration of population based upon the direct
interrogation of the inhabitants, as well as of the schedules
dealing with the movement of population. The statistics
of intermigration form the only exception. In regard to
emigration over seas, the Imperial Statistical Office obtains
the requisite reports annually through the officials of the
harbors from which the emigrants depart; and statistics
of arrival at and departure from the municipalities, in so far
as information is at hand, are collected and compiled by the
diflEerent cities, and most extensively and also probably most
carefully by the city of Berlin.
As a rule, enumerations of population occur quinquen-
nially and are each time planned in conformity to resolu-
tions by the federal council after preparatory work by the
Conference of Statisticians. At enumerations in years
ending in 0 it is customary to employ more comprehensive
interrogatories and a wider treatment than in years ending
in 5. The federal states carry out population enumerations
partly by means of individual counting cards, as in Prussia,
partly by means of householders' lists which offer great
advantages when Hollerith machines are used as was done
in several federated states when the results of the population
enumeration of 1910 were compiled. Especially at popula-
tion enumerations, some of the federated states make fre-
quent use of the right to increase the questions required by
the Empire through special questions relating to their do-
GERMAN EMPIRE 355
main. Some federated states also combine the current
statistics of births, marriages and deaths, based upon the
registration by the state offices, with a more thorough in-
quiry in regard to divorces and the legitimation of children
born out of wedlock.
The conditions of occupation among the inhabitants are
inquired into at population enumerations, but the results
are not compiled for the country as a whole as they serve
solely for purposes of testing the correctness of the entries.
Statistics of occupation are obtained at special enumerations
of population that are carried out exactly as the others
through interrogation of the inhabitants and usually com-
bined with more detailed investigations concerning the
industrial and agricultural employments. Such enumera-
tions of occupation and employment took place in 1882,
1895 and 1907 and were made in the summer time (June),
while the population enumerations proper must always be
made at the beginning of December. The method of organ-
ization was the same as at enumerations of population.
Cooperation is sought at both kinds of enumeration and
not only for the purpose of getting the schedules filled out,
for the persons who distribute and collect th^m in all parts
of the Empire are almost without exception voluntary
workers of the neighborhood who perform this service with-
out compensation. In this manner a staff of hundreds of
thousands of enumerators is enlisted which makes it possible
to complete the enumeration within a few days, so that the
preliminary population figures for the different communes
in greater part can be determined and published as early as
two or three days after the enumeration.
The results of population enumerations with the classifi-
cations fixed for the Empire are published in separate vol-
umes of the Statistics of the German Empire. The different
federated states usually publish the results in greater detail
for their own domain, which is also true of the statistics of
the movement of population. The comprehensive publica-
tions of the occupation and employment enumerations.
356 MEMORIAL VOLUME
however, are chiefly to be found among the imperial docu-
ments, and for the investigation of 1907 occupied altogether
12,600 pages, ten volumes being given to occupational
statistics, one volume to agricultural statistics, and ten
volumes to trade statistics.
Aside from these enumerations which cover the entire
field of gainful occupations of every kind and every magni-
tude, a series of current statistical investigations occur
relative to single fields of industrial activity, which are under-
taken partly in connection with revenue laws and partly
follow from the exercise of certain governmental rights of
supervision. In this category belong the statistics of the
production of salt, tobacco, cigarettes, spirits, vinegar, beer,
sugar, sparkling wines, playing cards, matches, etc., also
statistics of sea fisheries. The statistics of insurance com-
panies and of the industrial patents issued are compiled in
special governmental oflices under which they sort.
In the last decade statistical inquiry has sought to gain
an understanding of industrial products for which the direct
interests specified were not at hand. Only one of the
branches of private industry has been subjected to statistical
investigations for some time: the production of mines, salt
and smelting works which has been ascertained annually
since 1872 by means of schedules sent to each concern. Of
late a number of other important industries have been in-
cluded in the investigations, for instance, those covering
textiles, chemicals, motor vehicles, mills, cement, leather
and others. These investigations, however, are not con-
tinuous but a special resolution is adopted in regard to each,
and schedules relating to their production in a definite year
are sent to the individual firms after the government has
consulted with representatives of the respective industries
about the form of the schedule. It is not obligatory for the
proprietors of the industries to fill out the schedules but
they always do it voluntarily, being assured that the publica-
tion of the results, which usually follow in the Quarterlies,
GERMAN EMPIRE 357
will be undertaken in such a manner that none of the figures
relating to a single industry can be distinguished.
The statistics of building activity and dwelling conditions,
which are especially important from the social point of viewi
are chiefly collected by the municipal statistical oflSces.
Reports on these subjects are therefore regularly to be
found in the publications of the municipal statistical oflSces.
For a number of cities, however, an annual report is made
according to a uniform scheme in the Government Labor
Journal, showing the number, the increase and decrease of
dwelling houses and tenements as well as the number of
empty tenements.
The numbers dealing with the supply of dwelling houses
and tenements are further applied ifi connection with the
general enumerations which these municipaUties combine
with censuses of population. These municipal enumerations
of real estate and dwellings have become fixed undertakings,
and comprehensive statistical investigations are at hand
for the great cities in which the buildings are classified
according to the number of stories, time of erection, owner-
ship (whether privately owned by a single individual or by
several persons, whether public property, etc.), location,
number of tenements and occupants, etc. The tenements
themselves are classified according to the number of occu-
pants, the price of rental, the existence of sub-lessees, and
other characteristics. In addition, several cities make
special enumerations of empty tenements once or several
times during the year.
Mention has already been made of the investigations for
purposes of agricultural statistics in connection with the
great enumerations of occupation and trade at which all,
even the smallest, farms are included and classified according
to the use made of the land, the number of live stock, the
supply of machinery, etc. Aside from these, investigations
have been undertaken several times relating to the entire
and not simply to the agricultural utilization of the soil in
each community, the most recent occurring in 1900 and in
358 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1913. During the summer the condition of the crops is
determined every month on the basis of reports from culti-
vators who furnish them voluntarily; in the spring of every
year statements are made of the areas devoted to the differ-
ent crops, and in the fall of the results of the harvest.
Finally, at the beginning of December of every year, enu-
merations of live stock are made which regularly include
horses, cattle, swine and sheep and occasionally donkeys,
goats, beehives, and the results of breeding.
The social and labor statistics are yielded by a varied
assortment of different investigations. To them belong
the current reports of the operation of the social insurance
laws which partly are compiled in the Imperial Statistical
Office and partly in the state insurance office. Prominent
among them are statistics of the general obligatory sickness
associations to which all workmen with less than 2,500
marks income must belong, and those of the disability insur-
ance which all must take out who have less than 2,000 marks
income. Moreover, in addition to the comprehensive
annual reports, monthly statements are collected and pub-
lished showing the number of members of the sickness
associations as they permit one to form a judgment of the
condition of the labor market at any time. In the same
category belong, among others, censuses of the unemployed
which in some municipalities are undertaken from time to
time, and in the kingdom of Saxony annually; furthermore,
the compilations which have been made several times by
the division for labor statistics in the Imperial Statistical
Office relative to strikes and lockouts, the existing organiza-
tions of employers and employees, wage agreements and
other wage statistics, the organizations of women, the prices
of food and other prices.
The statistics of causes of death assembled in the Imperial
Department of Health at Berlin are based upon a scheme
introduced in 1892 and altered in 1904 which groups the
decedents according to six age classes. More comprehensive
statements, both in regard to the classification of the causes
GERMAN EMPmE 359
of death and to personal data, are provided by most of the
federated state and municipal statistical offices. In Ger-
many, as distinguished from many other states, the state-
ments of the causes of death are available for all deaths
because they are entered in the official register of social
classes upon which the mortality statistics generally are
based.
In the judicial system of the German Empire both juris-
diction and procedure were made uniform in most respects
during the period from 1879 to 1900. Therefore, although
the administration of justice for the greater part is left to
the separate states, the premises for uniform judicial sta-
tistics exist. The German Judicial Statistics, which have
been published annually by the Department of Justice since
1881, provide such statistics, first, relative to the activity
of the judicial offices generally, and secondly, since 1882, in
regard to the penal oflfences for which sentence was pro-
nounced, with exception of the simple "transgressions."
The basis of the criminal statistics proper is obtained by
means of counting cards which are to be made out by the
courts in every instance in which a competent verdict is
pronounced (condemning or acquitting) and to be trans-
mitted to the Imperial Statistical Office. Comprehensive
statistics of the administration of justice and of penal insti-
tutions for their own domain are published by the govern-
ments of the federated states.
Notwithstanding the fact that the autonomous finances
of the federated states differ widely from the imperial fi-
nances both in regard to their material basis and the method
of accounting employed, the Imperial Statistical Office,
in agreement with the statisticians of the federated states,
began some years ago to compile whatever was comparable
from the state budgets and the financial reports, and as a
result annual comparative financial statistics are published
in the Quarterlies. Differences similar to those to be found
in the states stand in the way of statistics of communal
finances for the entire Empire; and until now it has, there-
360 MEMORIAL VOLUME
fore, been necessary to limit them to comparative statements
in the relatively simple field of communal debts. Such have
been published three times in connection with the reports
of the indebtedness of other incorporated bodies which are
authorized to issue marketable obligations for indebtedness.
On the part pf the administrations of large municipalities
and their statisticians there has been no lack of efiForts to
make comparative surveys of their financial affairs, and they
have led, among other things, to repeated publications of a
financial-statistical character in the Statistical Year Book of
German Cities.
The presentations of the separate states in the field of
comparative financial statistics for their own communes
are more comprehensive. Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and
other lederated states have repeatedly made extensive pub-
lications of this kind in the organs of their statistical offices.
Beside the general statistics of state commune finances,
special attention has been devoted to statistics of taxation.
Only the inheritance tax is dealt with directly and uni-
formly for the entire Empire, and therefore compiled sta-
tistically; and it does not include the totality of the estates
especially because the spouse and direct descendants are not
taxed.
The statistics showing the results of the existing taxation
of income in all the federated states is of much greater
significance, although the principles on which it rests differ
and there are various gradations, for they are usually com-
bined with a more or less complete statement of the income
of the population. The statistical publications afford a
current account of the amount and distribution of the in-
comes based on the imposts for the purpose of income tax.
This is done with greatest completeness in the kingdom of
Saxony where all incomes down to the smallest are valued
and classified according to the personal characteristics of the
receiver of the income (sex, age, position in the household).
The system of schools has also been brought into the field
of joint statistics under an agreement among the statistical
GERMAN EMPIRE 361
oflSces, although, in the separate states it is subject to quite
different regulations. The first investigation occurred in
1911, and the promise was held out that it would be repeated
at five-year periods. The statistics in question cover all
grades of educational establishments from the common
school to the high school.
The business activity of savings banks has lately been
made a subject of joint comparative surveys. The sta-
tistics of savings banks are collected by the separate states.
In addition to the statistics of railways already men-
tioned, another branch of public intercourse must be con-
sidered, namely, that of the mail service. Formerly the
postal administrations of the Empire and those of Bavaria
and Wurttemburg published statistics annually, but they are
now published triennially. They are based partly upon
continuous investigation and party upon investigations
providing samples for some days of the year only in con-
formity with the agreement among the countries belonging
to the World Postal Union.
This brings the enumeration of some of the subjects of
statistical treatment to an end. It does not and cannot lay
any claim to completeness, for the statistical tasks are as
widely scattered as the tasks of the administration itself;
and there is probably no single field which has not been
worked up statistically during the long period of the activity
of many of the numerous statistical oflSces in the German
Empire and states and cities.
IV. Relation to International Statistics
As may be gathered from the preceding, the feature of the
progressive development of the official statistics in the Ger-
man Empire since its foundation has been the gradual ex-
pansion of the comparative statistical presentation which
at the outset related only to affairs belonging under a uni-
form administration and has gradually come to include
affairs that are variously regulated and, therefore, present
362 MEMORIAL VOLUME
obstacles to a uniform statistical treatment. Perhaps this
statistical activity is in small part to be ascribed to the
internal arrangement that has been effected in the peculiar
relations between the federated governments which are
quite unlike those of the two other most important fed-
erated states of the present-day civilized world, namely, the
United States of America and Switzerland. I mention this
circumstance simply in order to call to mind that within
their own domain the German statistics have had to master
tasks associated with diflSculties similar to those which the
Imperial Statistical Institute has undertaken. For all
international statistics are made difficult by the fact that the
conditions to which the statistics of the separate states
relate are of a national and not of an international character
— corresponding to the federated state arrangement of
affairs in Germany as distinguished from the imperial — and
that, therefore, the numerical results obtained are in them-
selves not comparable because they relate to heterogeneous
things. Such tasks obligate the practical statistician to
particular care in methods so that he may guard against a
false interpretation of the statistical results.
The experiences in this direction had with the German
statistics in internal affairs should contribute to a greater
consciousness of the difficulties of international comparisons;
and there was a time when persons in Germany took a skep-
tical attitude towards efforts in this direction. Yet of late
the Imperial Statistical Office has begun to add international
comparative surveys to its publications, especially to the
Statistical Year Book. It thus unites itself to the tradition
of Ernst Engel, who, together with his Belgian colleague
and exemplar, Quetelet, instigated the international sta-
tistical congresses whose heir the International Statistical
Institute became later on.
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN GREAT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND
By Sir Athelstane Baines, C.S.I.
Ex-President of the Royal Statistical Society
The Domesday Book may be called the first landmark
in British statistics, and for many generations it remained
the only record of the resources and population of the part
of England to which it related. In the time of Edward III
a record was started of the Customs dues received at the
Port of London; and in the same reign the devastation
caused by the Black Death led to the preparation of a com-
prehensive roll, of the nature of the Roman Census, in con-
nection with the levy of a poll-tax. In the Tudor period
the almost continuous unrest in western Europe rendered
it necessary to take stock from time to time of the number
of men capable of bearing arms, as well as of the fiscal re-
sources of the country, in anticipation of war. The dread
of the plague, which was strong in the mind of Henry VIII,
was probably the origin of the registration of deaths from
1532, followed by that of baptisms by parish clergymen.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, when there was
a sKght recrudescence of the plague, weekly Bills of Mor-
tality were published for London, the cause of death being
investigated and reported by "ancient matrons," and in
1629 the distinction of sex was added to the return. It was
not until 1661-62 that these records were made to tell their
tale, in the statistical sense. In that year Capt. John Grant
published his "Observations" on the London Bills of Mor-
tality, thus heading the long list of works on the vital sta-
tistics of the country. He was the first to bring to light the
regularity of social phenomena, the excess of male births
over female, and the subsequent tendency to numerical
equality of the sexes. The novelty and importance of his
366 MEMORIAL VOLUME
work had a considerable influence upon those of his con-
temporaries who were attracted by the subject, of whom
the best known are Sir William Petty. and Halley, the as-
tronomer. The former "expressed himself in terms of num-
ber, weight and measure," in his Political Arithmetick and
other writings touching upon the resources of the state, and
he anticipates modern statisticians not only in his methods,
but also in his loud complaints of the inadequacy of the raw
material of his calling, and in the urgency of his demand for
regular official returns of revenue and resources generally.
His wishes were met in one respect at least shortly after
his death, for in 1696 there was established a system of cus-
toms record, under an Inspector General of imports and
exports, who kept an account of the trade carried on with
foreign countries and British possessions, with values as-
signed to the various items in accordance with an official
list, prepared in 1694, and which, it may here be mentioned
in passing, was in force for exports down to 1798, and for
imports until 1854. About the same time Halley pubUshed
his celebrated "Estimate of the degrees of mortality of man-
kind," the first life-table prepared for a stationary popula-
tion, and the returns of the Hearth-tax were used by Gregory
King and Houghton for their respective estimates of the
population of the kingdom; estimates which were by no
means in harmony with each other. If not the birth-place
of life insurance, England has long been its adopted home;
and the end of the seventeenth century saw the foundation
of the earliest British companies for this purpose. They
were, however, more or less of the nature of lotteries, and
it was nearly half a century later that the mutual principle
was introduced. The eighteenth century may be said to
have seen the birth, in Germany, of statistics as a science,
and the example of that country in publishing something of
the nature of official abstracts of revenue, etc., was followed
in England, in the shape of the Royal Calendar, which first
appeared in 1730. In the last quarter of the century fig-
ures were largely pressed into the service of economics by
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 367
Eden, Golquhoun, Playfair and Arthur Young, but the
middle of this period was more distinguished for its special
studies, such as those of mortality-rates, than for the treat-
ment of statistics on the broad lines which had already
gained considerable currency on the Continent. The very
name of statistics was introduced from Germany by Dr.
Zimmermann about 1787, but it was through the compre-
hensive "Description of Scotland," by Sir John Sinclair,
that it became popular. This author, as he frankly tells
us, adopted the word because, being new, he thought it
would attract readers to his book. Amongst the important
publications of the end of the century of a statistical char-
acter, mention must not be omitted of perhaps the best
known of all, Malthus' works on Population, which suc-
ceeded in attracting the earnest and often unfriendly atten-
tion of not only his contemporaries, but those who came
after him, economists, statisticians and divines, even unto
this day. A great stimulus to the collection and publica-
tion of oflScial figures was given in France during the early
days of the Revolution, owing to the need of this reinforce-
ment of the foundations of the totally new order of things
which it was then expected would be established. This
upheaval of society in France, the great industrial changes
then in progress in England, and the impetus given later by
peace to the study of social questions, all contributed to
create a widespread demand for the statistical informajtion
by which facts could be appreciated, proposals tested, and
legislation made effective for attaining its object. Even
though the "economists, sophisters and calculators" of
Burke's diatribe had not come entirely into their own,
they had vastly increased in numbers, experience and intel-
ligent inquisitiveness. One of the early symptoms of the
new spirit was the withdrawal in Parliament of the strenu-
ous opposition which had previously been offered to the
taking of a census. In 1801 the first decennial enumeration
took place, and the operations, like those of the second and
third, were entrusted to the very capable hands of the many-
368 MEMORIAL VOLUME
sided John Rickman, whose comments upon the results are
of great statistical merit. In other branches of official re-
turns, too, there was considerable activity. On the other
hand, in one or two directions public statistics fell some-
what into the shade. For instance, the larger life-insurance
companies had by this time acquired so much experience
that their chief actuarial advisers felt themselves justified in
relying upon the information furnished by their own records
rather than upon that provided by the parish registers; it is
on the former, therefore, that were based the new and fuller
life-tables in which mortality was correlated with occupa-
tion and age. Then, again, political economy took a strong
bias towards theory and abstract reasoning, and did not,
to use a modern phrase, invite statistics to endorse the
cheques drawn by speculation, an attitude which prevailed
for nearly two generations, until exponents who were experts
in mathematics as well as in economics entered the field.
One result of the increased output of oflSicial returns was
that the capacity of the departments collecting them to
deal adequately with the figures as statistics was overbur-
dened, and much valuable material, available in the raw,
never passed out of that rudimentary stage. Tables were
prepared in the rough and ready form which served the
immediate administrative purpose for which they had been
prescribed, and were then consigned to oblivion on the
office shelves. It became evident that this waste could and
should be prevented. In 1832, therefore, a Statistical De-
partment was added to the Board of Trade, and to it was
committed the task of "collecting, arranging and publish-
ing statements relating to the condition, and bearing on
the various interests of the British Empire." In this way
official recognition was for the first time accorded to sta-
tistics as a special branch of inquiry.
The age, however, was one of discussion, and it was not
to be expected that food material such as the above should
be left to official interpretation only, or that efforts should
not be made from outside to extend the field of investiga-
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 369
tion. The important step towards the organization of sta-
tistics taken by the Board of Trade, accordingly, was speed-
ily followed by the introduction of opportunities for testing
and expanding their utility by means of non-oflScial discus-
sion. Within a year or two several societies were formed
for that purpose, and these have since continued to work
on lines parallel with those of the various state departments,
but in close touch and cooperation with them. The objects
and functions of these bodies will be referred to below, in
sequence of the subject of oflBcial statistics, to which the
present observations are restricted.
It is on the material provided by the government that
statisticians are mainly bound to rely when investigating
social conditions in their wider aspects, because by no other
agency can information be systematically collected from so
extensive a field, or with so near an approach to uniformity
in the interpretation of the object of the inquiry. The
eflBciency of o£Scial statistics, therefore, is a matter in which
the interests of statisticians join hands with those of states-
men and economists, and it is on the careful scrutiny of the
results already obtained that improvements are suggested,
defects corrected, and the path indicated which may lead to
regions not yet sufficiently explored. The progress made by
official statistics on these lines after 1832 was both wide and
rapid, in harmony with the many favorable opportunities
presented by the circumstances of the next quarter of a cen-
tury. The general course, of the advance was necessarily
that of the growth of the country in population, education
and resources, with the consequently increased complexity
of social relations. There has also to be taken into account
the extension of state intervention, by way of control, regu-
lation or inspection, into matters which were formerly held
to be outside the purview of the community at large, as repre-
sented by its government. There is almost everywhere a
tendency for this intervention to increase, though the
strength of the inclination varies greatly according to the
idiosyncrasies of the different states. In the United King-
26
370 MEMORIAL VOLUME
dom the system of government by popular representation
lends itself with unusual ease to legislative extension of
the functions of the state. The only result of this multipli-
cation of functions that is relevant to the present subject is
the inevitable multiplication of statistical returns which it
involves, a prolificity which was particularly notable towards
the beginning and the end of the eighty years' period under
comment.
The field of oflScial statistics, then, is practically co-exten-
sive with that of public administration, the development of
which is a subject outside the compass of this review. It
will be enough to refer to a few of the principal landmarks
of the last eighty years in which the connection between
legislation and statistics has been especially direct and close,
and these may serve to indicate the general trend of the
action taken by the state, intended, or likely, to provide the
material for scientific analysis.
First in statistical importance comes the establishment in
1837 of civil registration of vital statistics, extended to Scot-
land in 1853 and to Ireland about ten years later. Registra-
tion was made compulsory in 1874. The decennial census
is placed under the Registrars General, but a special Act is
passed for each enumeration. The census of production was
taken under an Act passed in 1907, and was conducted by
the Board of Trade.
Statistics of local government and taxation are submitted
by municipal and county authorities under various Acts, of
which the principal are those of 1835, 1882 and 1899, for
towns, and 1888 and 1894 for counties and small rural areas.
The County Council Act for Ireland was passed in 1898.
Before these enactments, returns were furnished by various
authorities on no uniform system.
Closely connected with the above is the sanitary adminis-
tration of urban and rural areas, which is now regulated
mainly by Acts passed in 1872-75, requiring the submission
of elaborate returns to the government.
Elementary education is regulated in England by the Act
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 371
of 1870, extended in 1902, and supplemented by many other
measures relating to special branches of education. The
first connection of the state with education, however, goes
back, as in Scotland, to 1839, when public funds were first
allotted to this object. The Irish system is of slightly earlier
date, and more centralized, but full statistics are prepared
in aU three kingdoms. The Poor Law of 1834 had its
statistical side as well as its administrative, though it was
not until 1848 that the returns under it were completely
organized. Statistics on the subject, however, had been
collected to some extent, by local authorities, for many years
before the reform of the law.
The protective, or, as it has been called by some, the
paternal legislation referred to above, yields a large crop of
statistics of inspection, control, accidents, wages, and the
like. The measures best known, perhaps, are those relating
to factories and mines, which date, statistically, from the
forties, but have been very often amended, extended and
consolidated. Of the now numerous friendly societies, those
connected with building were the first to be recognized by the
law. From 1840 onwards, however, registration has been
extended to all, and annual returns of membership, expen-
diture and resources are published by government. In 1875
trade linions and similar institutions were placed under
registration, and have since furiushed valuable statistics
regarding wages and employment.
Within the last few years the volume of periodical returns
has received substantial accretion from the institution of old
age pensions (1908), distress committees (1905), labor
exchanges, and national health insurance (1911). The same
may be said of the extension of municipal trading, of housing
of the working classes, inspection of drugs, food, etc., within
the last twenty years.
As already stated, the subjects above mentioned have
been selected merely as landmarks, and they occupy but a
comparatively small portion of the field of national statistics.
There must be taken into account, too, the voluminous
372 MEMORIAL VOLUME
returns statutorily required from railways, insurance and
joint-Stock companies, bankers, the post office and its
branches dealing with telegraphs, telephones and savings-
banks, all originating since 1833, the year taken as the start-
ing-point of this review. Then, again, the fiscal changes in
the early forties and in 1910, the growth of shipping, the
organization of agricultural returns in 1866 and 1889, the
establishment of a Labor Department in 1886, and legisla-
tion regarding the tenure of land in each of the three king-
doms from 1871 onwards, have substantially increased the
rich statistical harvest garnered by official agency and sus-
ceptible of being made digestible by the general consumer.
The task of collecting, arranging and publishing this mass
of information is distributed amongst the diflPerent depart-
ments of government in a way, partly historical, partly dic-
tated by financial or official convenience, but in many cases
requiring an explanation not inherent in the nature of the
subject. The administration is thoroughly departmental;
each of the great offices arose and grew up independently of
the rest. As new duties are imposed, their performance is
allocated to a subordinate branch organized for the purpose
within an existing office; or another department, equally
independent, is created.
Of the five departments under the Principal Secretaries of
State, the Home Office is the only one which needs mention
here, as the India Office, also a large purveyor of statistics,
will be dealt with elsewhere. There are then the five admin-
istrative boards, of which the Boards of Trade, Agriculture,
Education and Local Government furnish the bulk of the
administrative returns not emanating from the Home Office.
Financial accounts and statements are in the charge of the
Treasury, and the National Debt, Inland Revenue and Cus-
toms and Excise, are under special Commissions. A brief
conament upon the respective functions of these departments
will serve to indicate the share of each in the national statis-
tical output.
The Home Office stands first of the statistical departments
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 373
in both seniority and official rank. It dates from 1782, and
was established upon its present footing in the first year of
the nineteenth century. As to its functions, it has been
called the residuary legatee of the other branches of govern-
ment, in that it used to succeed to all duties not provided for
in the more specialized departments. The statistics which
it now publishes are those relating to crime and litigation,
prisons and reformatories, and metropolitan and county
police, for England and Wales. For the United Kingdom as
a whole, it issues the detailed account of the inspection of
factories and workshops, and that relating to coal and other
mines. To these last some figures of output and prices are
added, together with corresponding details for the principal
foreign countries. A statistical officer is attached to the
Department, and the returns of civil litigation, bankruptcy
and the like are reviewed annually by a legal expert. In
Scotland there is a separate Commission for Prisons, with a
statistical officer in the establishment. The annual returns
for prisons, crime, litigation and reformatories, etc., are
issued under the authority of the Secretary for Scotland. In
Ireland, a General Prisons Board was set up in 1877, and
there are separate departments dealing with the constabu-
lary, reformatories, inebriates and the other matters which,
in England, are placed under the Home Office. The statis-
tics for all these are published with an annual review by the
Registrar General for Ireland.
Next to the Home Department, the statistical offices to
be noticed here are those known as Boards, a title which
implies the collective responsibiHty of several highly-placed
officials of state. The Board, however, never meets, and the
departments are conducted by one or two salaried represent-
atives in Parhament. The Local Government Board was
established in 1871; that of Agriculture in 1889, and the
Education Board in 1899.
There has been a Board of Trade since 1660. In 1786 it
was constituted a Committee of the Privy Council, and its
present title was statutorily assigned to it as late as 1862.
374 MEMORIAL VOLUME
From its original functions in connection with the collection
of information about trade and commerce, it has advanced
to a highly important position in regard to transport, labor,
and the supervision of a considerable number of statutes of
very detailed appKcation. For many years after 1833, when,
as above stated, a special Statistical Branch was added to it,
this Board was the only government department in which
official statistics were dealt with as a special subject, and to
this day, it stands out as the premier representative of the
scientific interpretation of public returns. The Statistical
Branch has had the good fortune of being directed by a
succession of eminent experts. It was started by Porter,
by whom the incoherent mass of periodical tables then pre-
pared was for the first time reduced to orderly and compre-
hensive returns, accompanied by lucid explanations of the
meaning and limitations of the figures. Moreover, he took
advantage of the wide scope afforded by his commission to
collect returns from other sources, adding them to his review,
and giving to it a comparative character by including the
figures for a series of years. His successor, Valpy, started
the series of Annual Abstracts which now form a necessary
part of the equipment of every student of the statistics of
British commerce and economics. To these names should
be added those of Giffen and Bateman in more modern
times. In addition to the returns of trade and shipping,
this Board is responsible for those relating to railways and
tramways, for the registration of assurance and joint-stock
companies, for the figures of bankruptcy and emigration and
immigration. It supervises the merchant-shipping acts and
those relating to weights and measures, patents and trade-
marks. It issues special tables of coal and metals produced,
exported or imported, and compiles the index-numbers of
the main articles of foreign trade and home consumption.
The valuable information received by the Foreign Office
from British consuls about the commercial conditions of
the countries where they are serving, is also made available
to the public in a convenient form by this Department.
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 375
The Labor Department of the Board of Trade was started
on a very modest scale in 1886, but has since developed into
a large and important center of information as to wages,
employment and conditions of the wage-earning classes gen-
erally. It still relies mainly upon the returns obtained from
the trade unions and friendly and cooperative societies, but
of late it has carried through extensive independent inquir-
ies, such as that into earnings and hours of work, and, on a
still wider basis, the first census of production. The super-
vision of the newly created Labor Exchanges has also been
added to its duties. An Annual Abstract of Labor Statis-
tics is compiled in this Department, containing not only the
returns of wages and employment collected as above men-
tioned, but statistics bearing upon the condition of the wage-
earner and other classes obtained by other offices.
The Local Government Board ranks next to the Board of
Trade in the number and variety of the duties it has to per-
form, which are all accompanied by multifarious tables. It
represents, since 1871, the old Poor LaW Board, with the
addition of some duties connected with sanitation and local
government previously performed by a Committee of the
Privy Council or by the Home Office. Up to 1834 there was
no central supervision of local authorities, but in that year
the Poor Law Commission exercised certain powers in that
direction, which were somewhat extended and reorganized
in 1847, when the Commission became the Board. The
centraKzation was made more complete in 1871, and the
tendency has since been to give the government a tighter
hold on the reins. This implies, naturally, a larger demand
for statistics by which the local administration can be tested.
The returns thus obtained enter, of course, into great detail
of area and subject. In England and Wales, to which the
jurisdiction of this Board is confined, there are more than
25,000 authorities, by each of which annual statistics of some
kind have to be rendered. The general heads under which
are grouped the statistics issued by this Board are Pauper-
ism, Municipal and County administration, and the working
376 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of special acts imposing duties of inspection or supervision.
As the successor of the Poor Law Board, the present Depart-
ment exercises complete control over the administration of
those laws, and prescribes, in consequence, the periodical
returns to be submitted by the local bodies. The most
important of these statistics are published in an annual
report. Separate volumes are issued on local administra-
tion, the taxation and valuation of municipal and county
areas, and the reports of local medical officers of health.
These last are prescribed, like those under the Poor Law, by
the Board itself, under the Public Health Acts. The volume
of local returns has been materially increased within the last
few years by the extension of municipal trading, in the way
of water-supply, tramways, lighting, the adoption of the
Acts relating to libraries, baths and washhouses, the housing
of the working-classes, the Town-planning Act, the care of
asylums, and, since 1902, the greater part of public instruc-
tion. To these must be added the returns required under
the Unemployed Workmen's Act, the Vaccination Acts and
those relating to the inspection of food, drugs, dairies, etc.
The returns from the health officers are dealt with by medi-
cal experts, and the rest are compiled and prepared for pub-
lication by a special statistical officer attached to the Board.
Officially, the B,egistrar General is under the Local Govern-
ment Board, but in practice, he works independently. Scot-
land and Ireland have each their Board on much the same
lines as that for England, and in each case the returns now
issued by the Board were, previous to its creation, prepared
by various detached offices. In Ireland, however, this work
was done by the Registrar General, from 1865 to 1873, when
the Board was established.
The Board of Agriculture is of recent creation, but ever
since the end of the eighteenth century inquiries, often par-
tial and incomplete, have been made by commissions,
societies and others, to collect information about the area
under the main crops and the average yield per acre. The
official returns of areas date from 1866 only, and the esti-
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 377
mated produce per acre, from 1884. The return of area is
voluntary, and is invited by schedules circulated and col-
lected by the officials of Inland Revenue. For the produce-
estimates, salaried experts are employed. The results are
examined and compiled by a trained statistical staff. The
supervision of the fisheries was only added to the duties of
the Agricultural Department in 1903. Scotland and Ireland
have each a Board of Agriculture. In the former country
statistics on the subject were collected from 1850 by a non-
official society, subsidized by the government. In Ireland,
the corresponding returns were published by the Registrar
General as early as 1854, and by the Agricultural Depart-
ment from 1900.
In connection with the agricultural statistics may be
mentioned those relating to meteorology. These were at
first under a Committee of the Privy Council. In 1854
they were made over to the Board of Trade, and subse-
quently placed under a director and committee, appointed
by the Treasury, by whom the returns are now issued.
There is a separate Board of Education for each of the three
kingdoms, owing to differences in the conditions and organ-
ization. In England, some statistics of attendance, etc.,
were furnished by the National Society from 1819. In
1832 public money was first granted to elementary schools,
and the government reserved the right of inspection. Seven
years later the supervision of the schools was assigned to
a committee of the Privy Council, which became a Depart-
ment in 1856, receiving the Science and Art Department
from the all-embracing Board of Trade. From 1870
onwards the work supervised by it has tended to increase
continuously with each of the numerous acts modifying the
system in one or other of its branches. In 1899, therefore,
the Department became a Board, under a President, and
possibly other members. The work of the committee super-
vising educational matters for Scotland was transferred to
a separate Board on the creation in 1885 of the office of
Secretary for Scotland. As in England, statistics of ele-
378 MEMORIAL VOLUME
mentary schools had been required as soon as public funds
were allotted to their maintenance, but full returns date
from 1872. In Ireland the control, which is closer than in
Great Britain, is vested in a National Board, with a Board
for Intermediate Education. .Technical education is under
the Board of Agriculture. The census, in this island,
includes certain educational details not in the British sched-
ule, and these form part of the Registrar General's series of
returns.
The Departments charged with the collection of the
revenue are under the Treasury, and, with the exception of
the post office, have no Parliamentary representative in
authority over them. The post office publishes all the re-
turns of the postal service, with those of the telegraphs
and telephones now under it. The financial side of the two
last is dealt with partly departmentally and partly in the
Treasury accounts. The savings banks under the post
office have also their relations with the general finance of
the country, whilst the other class of similar banks, known
as the trustee savings banks, are under an inspecting office
and the Commissioners of National Debt.
The Department of Inland Revenues, established in 1849,
is in charge of statistics of great interest, apart from their
fiscal importance. It collects the estate, legacy, and succes-
sion duties; stamp duties and fees paid in stamps; the land
tax; the inhabited house-duty; the income tax, and, until
1909, the excise duties. Since 1910 the new land valuation
operations have been placed under this office. Its annual
report, which, with a break of a few years, has appeared
since 1857, is a valuable summary of the direct taxation of
the country.
The Customs Office, in some form or other, has existed
for centuries. It is now a commission, subordinate, as aboye
stated, to the Treasury, and closely connected, statistically,
with the Board of Trade, but with its own statistical branch.
In addition to the collection of the revenue from which it
derives its title, it exercises many duties in connection
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 379
with shipping, seamen, passengers, ahens, and emigrants,
not to mention those involved in the collection of excise,
now placed in its charge, including, as it does, the adminis •
tration of the Old Age Pension Acts. In its strictly depart-
mental capacity, it publishes the returns of trade and
navigation, with special returns of coal, cotton, bullion, and
trade with Ireland. This, however, is but a fraction of its
work, as its widespread staff of excise oflBcers is utilized to
collect information for the use of other departments, such as
details of corn sold in local markets, the trade in minerals
and agricultural produce, the foreign passenger traffic, and
proceedings under the Adulteration of Food Acts, etc.
On the other hand, for the last few years, the collection of
license fees under certain heads has been taken from it,
and made over to local authorities, who submit their returns
elsewhere. In connection with the Labor Department of
the Board of Trade, the returns of friendly societies were
mentioned above. The fountain-head of these statistics,
however, is the General Registry of such societies, which
was estabUshed in 1846 to certify the rules passed by these
bodies. In its present form it dates from 1875, and pub-
lishes the annual statements of number, membership,
resources and expenditure of all industrial and provident
societies, including trade unions, whose registration is
compulsory.
This enumeration of the statistical departments of the
state may fittingly be brought to a close with a reference
to the great provider of vital statistics, the Registrar Gen-
eral. In his office are collected, examined and compiled
the returns from all the subordinate registering offices
throughout England and Wales. The details are studied by
a special statistical expert, usually a member of the medical
profession, who prepares an annual review, in which are
given, also, comparative figures for the rest of the British
Empire and the chief foreign countries. Every ten years,
a supplementary report is issued in which the figures for
the preceding decade are actuarially examined, and compared
380 MEMORIAL VOLUME
with those of previous periods. The Registrar General is
also in charge of all the census operations. His compeer in
Scotland exercises similar functions. In Ireland, the Reg-
istrar General is more of a head statistical oflBcer to the local
government, and the census, as already indicated, takes a
wider sweep than in Great Britain.
The above survey of the origin and development of the
oflBces, among which the statistical world of the government
is distributed, will serve to bring to notice the most promi-
nent characteristic of the organization of British adminis-
tration, that is, its marked departmentalism. Every new
duty undertaken by the state is assigned its place in the
official hierarchy, and though combination, dissolution and
creation are not rare, the atmosphere of departmental
independence is not disturbed by the change. The ten-
dency of the legislation of recent years has been to increase
this aloofness of department from department. An act,
instead of leaving the legislature complete in its provision
for detail, is now passed with none but general provisions
in the text, the power to issue executive orders having the
force of law on all matters of detail being delegated to the
department placed in charge of the working of the enact-
ment. Under this addition of power and responsibility,
the department tends to grow more self-centered and ab-
sorbed in its own sphere of action. Each department,
then, pursues its work regardless of that of the rest. It
prescribes its own returns, excellently devised, no doubt,
for the immediate purpose in view; and when the amount
of material rolling in has grown enough to justify special
attention, the department throws up a statistical branch,
in which the returns are examined and published in strict
accordance with departmental needs. This tendency is
not without its advantages, in that it gives considerable
scope to expert knowledge, and increases the interest in the
work of those tied down to it. On the other hand, where,
as in the United Kingdom, there is no central controlling
or consultative authority over official statistics, depart-
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 881
mental independence inevitably leads to duplication, over-
lapping and incongruity. The correlation of one set of
figures with another is often made impossible by some vital
difference in detail, due solely to the fact that the returns
were severally prepared by those not in consultation with
each other. As far back as 1877 this defect was made the
ground of an inquiry by a special Committee on Depart-
mental Statistics generally. The Treasury Minute appoint-
ing the committee, after stating that there was great room
for improvement in the system on which official statistics
were prepared went on, "Indeed, it can scarcely be said
that at present there is any system at all. Each depart-
ment compiles and publishes from time to time information
more or less detailed with regard to the business with
which it is concerned, but there appears to be no fixed
principles laid down for the guidance of the several offices,
and the consequence is that but little harmony or coherence
exists between the various classes of statistics thus published,
comparison between them is often impossible, and their
practical utility is thereby most seriously impaired. . . .
The chief vices of the present practice would seem to be
a want of condensation, which leads to obscurity in the
statistics themselves, and to waste in the printing of them,
and a want of uniformity, which leads to positive confusion;
and although with varying laws and varying customs pre-
vailing in the different divisions of the United Kingdom
it may not be possible to introduce absolute harmony with
the returns relating to each, my Lords believe that much
might be done to simplify and systematize, the statistical
information which is now suppUed from official sources, if
the subject were to be fully and authoritatively inquired
into."
Many useful suggestions were elicited by this committee,
but the inquiry was not exhaustive, nor were the members
unanimous in their recommendations, on which, accordingly,
no action was taken. To a great extent, therefore, the
strictures passed thirty seven years ago are by no meaug
382 MEMORIAL VOLUME
obsolete, and the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
contains ample testimony to the shortcomings of the official
statistics of the present day. There are signs, however,
of improvement in the returns of the more recently created
departments, and the work of the statistical branches of
the Boards of Trade and Agriculture needs fear no compari-
son with that done in other coimtries. It should always
be borne in mind, in discussing official statistics, that they
are intended for guidance in the treatment of single ques-
tions, and that it is essential that they should be ready with
as little delay as possible. The work is thus necessarily
specialized, and leaves but little time for deliberate analysis
on scientific principles, involving, as it must do, wide com-
parison and the application of theory. This method of
treatment has made rapid strides almost within the last
generation, whereas the official machinery takes long to
alter. Again, the spirit of statistical investigation is far
keener and more widely spread now than when most of the
government returns were devised, and it has been said,
with much truth, that more use is made of these returns
outside the offices than within. The criticism brought to
bear from outside has not been without result in individual
cases, but without the controlling influence of an authori-
tative central office, it is difficult to see how statistical
interdependence between the numerous departments of
state can be secured.
Changing now the point of view, the above survey of the
statistics to be found in each state department may be
conveniently supplemented by an indication of the depart-
ment in which each main branch of statistics may be foimd.
The following list includes the principal subjects in question,
without entering into detail unnecessarily in so general a
review. The grouping is under the heads: Population and
Health; Social and Moral; Production; Commercial; Finan-
cial and Fiscal, and Industrial.
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 383
Census: The Registrars General.
Vital Statistics: The same, but special returns for Anny and Navy.
Sanitation: Local Government Board, on reports by local medical officers of
health.
Lunacy: Local Government Board, from reports by municipal and county author-
ities.
Emigration, etc.: Board of Trade, on reports from Customs Commission. For
Ireland a special report is issued by the Registrar General.
Aliens: Home Office, on returns from Customs Commission.
Municipal and Local Administration: Local Government Board.
Educatiian: England, Board of Education; Scotland, Committee of Council of
Education; Ireland, Commission of National Education, Intermediate Educa-
tion Board, and for Technical Education, the Board of Agriculture.
RefomuUories, etc.: Home Office, Scottish Office, and in Ireland, Registrar General.
Crime, Litigation and Bankruptcy: Home Office, Scottish Office, and for Ireland,
the Registrar General.
Prisons: England and Scotland, Prisons Commission; Ireland, General Prisons
Board. Returns summarized and published by Home Office, Scottish Office,
and for Ireland, the Registrar General.
Friendly Societies, etc.: England and Scotland, the General Registry of Friendly
Societies.
Old Age Pensions: The Customs and Excise Department.
Pauperism: The Local Government Boards.
National Health Insurance: The Commission, under the Treasury.
Agriculture and Fisheries: The Boards of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Mines: Home Office, from returns of Inspectors. Special returns of production,
export, prices, of coal, by Board of Trade.
Factories, etc.: Home Office, from Inspectors' reports. Municipal inspection of
workshops reported to Local Government Board.
Manufactures: No periodical returns. Census of Production (1906-1912), pub-
lished by Board of Trade.
Prices: Board of Trade; Agricultural produce. Board of Agriculture.
Trade, Shipping, Navigation: Customs Department, summarized by Board of
Trade.
Joint-Stock Companies: Board of Trade. Windings-up, Home Office.
Insurance Companies: Annual retiurns by Board of Trade.
Railways: Board of Trade.
Tramways: Board of Trade (Revenue- working); Local Government Board
(cash accounts).
Post, Telegraph and Telephone: Postmaster General's reports.
Coinage: Master of the Mint.
Bank cf England: The Governors.
Clearing Houses: Annual and other reports.
Savings Banks: Post Office. Trustee Savings Banks, Inspector's report. Sum-
marized by Registrar of Friendly Societies.
National Revenue and Expenditure, Debt, etc.: The Treasury, Parliamentary
accounts.
384 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Taxation: Direct, Inlaud Revenue Commissioners.
Indirect, Customs and Excise Commissioners.
Licenses: Customs and Excise Commission and, for Assigned Licenses, the Local
Government Board.
Local Taxation, Rates, Loans, etc.: Local Government Board.
Wages, Hours of Labor, Fluctuatiotis, etc.: Board of Trade (Labor Department).
Trade-Boards: The same.
Unempltyment Insurance: The same. (Distress Committees), Local Government
Board.
Trade Unions: Registry of Friendly Societies. ,
Strikes, Conciliation, etc.: Board of Trade (Labor Department).
General Statistical Abstracts: Board of Trade collects from all Departments of
Government, compiles and publishes:
1. United Kingdom; Comparative for 15 years.
2. British Dominions and Colonies; as above.
3. The British Empire; summarized from the above.
4. Principal Foreign Countries; on same lines, aa far as possible, as for
British coimtries.
5. Labor Statistics; for the United Kingdom; summarizes returns from
other Departments on all subjects bearing upon the condition of the
wage-earning classes.
The position of non-oflScial statistical work remains to be
reviewed. There is no reason to refer in this survey to
the monumental work of the great investigators of the past,
or even to that of authors happily still living. The class of
statistical publications which needs mention here is that
which is in current progress, yielding fruit in the present,
and likely to go on so doing. Into this category fall the
periodical returns of the Institute of Bankers, the British
Iron Association, Lloyd's, the Corn-market Journals, the
reports upon the cotton trade by Messrs. Ellison, Tattersall
and others, and on the woollen trades by Messrs. Helmuth
and Schwartz, all of which have been pubhshed for many
years, and are accepted as authoritative in the trades.
There are then the well-known Price-Index-Numbers of
Mr. Sauerbeck and the Economist newspaper, and the
annual commercial review of the latter. Several other
publications of the same character and repute might be
quoted, but, with the above as samples, the nature of the
material can be appreciated.
The next part of the general subject is that which is con-
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 385
cerned with the societies and associations instituted for the
express study of statistics, to the rise of which reference
was made in connection with the establishment of the
Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, in 1832.
The first body to move in the matter was the British Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Science, which formed a
Statistical Section in 1833. The same year a Statistical
Society was founded in Manchester. The enterprise was
hedged round with somewhat stringent precautionary
restrictions, suggested by the political atmosphere of the
time. What with the Reform Bill and other important
Parliamentary questions, party feeling ran unusually high
and hot. One of the main objects of a scientific society,
therefore, was to keep as far as possible aloof from partici-
pation in discussions which could be at all connected with
the "dreary world" of politics. Thus the studies of the
British Association were limited to "Facts relating to com-
munities of men which are capable of being expressed by
numbers, and which promise, when suflSciently multiplied,
to indicate general laws/' Several men of eminence on
statistics chafed at being thus relegated to the position of
"hewers and drawers for political economy and philosophy,"
so they joined in promoting the Statistical Society of Lon-
don, now the Royal Statistical Society, with the view of
providing therein a wider scope for their inquiries. Their
hopes were frustrated, for a time at least, by the same spirit
of caution which dictated the limitations imposed upon
the earlier institutions. The functions of the new Society,
as announced in its Prospectus, were to "procure, arrange
and publish facts calculated to illustrate the condition and
prospects of society. " The door left open by the last four
words should be noted. In a society which met for discus-
sion, it was obviously impossible to exclude opinion or
speculation. In 1840, accordingly, the definition of the
objects and work of the Society was framed in general
accordance with the view taken in the present day of the
functions of statistical investigation, and about seventeen
26
386 MEMORIAL VOLUME
years later, the self-denying motto on the Journal, Aliis
exterendum, disappeared. It is left to the Council to see that
questions of the day, involving statistical considerations,
are put before the Society in a duly scientific form, free
from prejudice and partisan bias. In the early days of the
Society, following the precedent set by Manchester, original
investigations were conducted, through Standing Commit-
tees, into questions such as crime, education, wages, and the
like. It was soon found, however, that it was preferable
to work through committees appointed by the Council for
special inquiries, and reporting to the Society. Amongst
subjects thus selected have been, of late years, the meat
and milk supply of the country, the census arrangements in
the United Kingdom and those for other parts of the Empire,
the registration of still-births, and the like.
In one noteworthy characteristic the Royal Statistical
Society has been studiously consistent from its foundation,
the maintenance of close and friendly relations with the
official departments chiefly concerned with statistics, to wit,
the Boards of Trade and Agriculture and the Registrars
General. Many of the most distinguished and active
members of the Society have belonged to one or other of
these offices, and, conversely, few official statisticians of
note have not held office in the Society. This association
of experienced officials with private investigators of estab-
lished reputation has materially contributed to effective
discussion, improved methods of observation, and a wider
field of inquiry in different branches of the public service.
The Manchester Statistical Society preceded, as above
stated, that formed in London, on much the same lines.
Original inquiries through committees into social questions
formed an important part of its work. Its general tendency
seems to have been less statistical, in the technical sense,
than towards economics and social science. Much the same
may be said of the Dublin Society, founded in 1847 by
Archbishop Whateley and others, for statistics and social
inquiry. Unfortunately, such inquiries are apt, in Ireland,
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 387
to assume an ineradicably political character, wherein
statistics occupy but a very subordinate position.
Training in statistical theory and methods is a compara-
tively young plant in the United Kingdom, and still rare
and somewhat tender. It is efficiently carried out at Cam-
bridge and at University College, London, and at the London
School of Economics and Political Science. In the public
service its value is recognized by the introduction for special
subjects of experts of proved merit in non-official work, or
by the delegation of employees who may have shown marked
aptitude for statistical study either in the course of their
official duties or by contributing papers to statistical, eco-
nomic or actuarial societies. It is worth while to take into
consideration, also, whilst on the general subject, the great
increase in the use made of statistics in the monthly and
quarterly periodicals, in the popular treatment of social
questions of the day, which has been one of the noteworthy
features of late years in this class of literature. Of course
a good deal of this material does not bear the hall-mark
of scientific training, but more often than not, the authors
are connected with some one of the numerous societies
where these studies are fostered and discussed.
From the statistics of the country itself, the transition is,
naturally, to their relation to those of other countries.
Statistical investigation is based, of course, upon comparison;
and the wider the field siu-veyed, that is, the more abundant
the evidence bearing upon different aspects of the subject,
the more valuable will be the results. This truism, as it will
appear to statisticians, is nowhere more fully appreciated
than in the heart of an empire made up of communities
scattered all over the world, and containing every variety
of race, and every stage of civilization and social develop-
ment. It was only to be expected, therefore, that the interest
in British possessions abroad which took shape in the in-
structions to the Board of Trade in 1832, should be extended
to the study of the corresponding information for other
countries, especially those of the West. The Great Exhibi-
388 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tion of 1851 brought to London a large concourse of men of
science, and thereby afforded a good opportunity for dis-
cussing the prospects of a periodical consultation of statis-
ticians in the capitals of Europe. The prime mover in the
matter was the veteran statistician Quetelet, and on his
initiative the first Congress was held in Brussels, in 1853.
Between that year and 1876 eight more were held, but after
that the enterprise faded out, owing to causes into which it
is not necessary to enter. Statistical science undoubtedly
profited considerably from these meetings, especially by the
discussion of the possibilities and difficulties of international
comparison. In 1885, accordingly, the Jubilee meeting of
the Royal Statistical Society gave the opportunity of reviv-
ing, in the place of its birth, the International Congress.
It was determined to found an International Statistical Insti-
tute on lines rather different from those of its predecessor.
The project was heartily welcomed by the leading statis-
ticians of Europe and America, most of whom have, at one
time or another, taken part in the biennial Congresses
which have been held regularly since 1887. The cause of
international comparison has been as vigorously promoted
by this Institute as by its forerunner, and the suggestions
thrown out in the form of resolutions and specimen tables
have had practical and beneficial results. In England, the
effect given to them has been perhaps more restricted than
in countries where administration is less decentralized, or
official statistical authority is more specialized and concen-
trated in fewer hands. Nevertheless, efforts have not been
spared to render this intercomparison possible in the case
of vital statistics, trade and agricultural returns, and certain
other subjects, in the annual Abstracts published by the
Registrars General and the Boards of Trade and Agriculture.
There are, however, it must be admitted, important points
regarding which the British official statistician maintains
an independent attitude, generally for reasons connected
with administration or definition. The cooperation of the
British government with the Institute is confined to the
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 389
recognition of an official status on the part of one or two
statisticians in the public service who would otherwise
attend the Congress in the capacity of private members;
and when the Institute meets in London, it is on the invi-
tation, and as the guests of, the Royal Statistical Society.
The connection of the government with the more recently
formed International Agricultural Institute is more direct,
though confined to a single department.
The general conclusions as to British statistical work
which the above survey may be said to indicate are, that
the raw material, whether official or other, is abundant and
carefully collected. The former, however, falls considerably
short of its full potential utility for want of coordination
and centralized supervision generally. Except in a few
special branches, too, it is given to the public without
having received the sifting, testing and correlation which
modern methods of analysis and comparison would apply
to it. Private investigation is active, though inclined to
specialization on somewhat narrow lines, and often, like
official work, it suffers from insufficient acquaintance with
the theoretic basis of scientific method, for the acquisition
of which opportunities are not yet adequate. Nevertheless,
the number of social problems forcing themselves upon
public notice, the keener and more general interest taken in
them, and the growing appreciation of the need of a statis-
tical foundation for all attempts at their solution, make
the outlook of statistics by no means unfavorable to sub-
stantial progress.
HUNGARY
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF OFFICIAL
STATISTICS IN HUNGARY
By Dr. Ladislaus von Buday
Ministerial-Sektionsrat
When the Hungarian nation reached Europe as one of the
last great waves in the wandering of the peoples, its Western
neighbors had aheady made a certain amount of progress in
the attainment of civilization. However, with a rapidity
born of its zeal, the nation, being very receptive to culture,
soon overcame this handicap. Thus its culture moved
parallel to that of the West during the Middle Ages —
although foreign war and internal strife frequently put its
strength to a severe test — and it was among the first to
experience the great spiritual rebirth of the Renaissance.
Mathias Corvinus, the king of the Hungarians, like the great
rulers of the Cinquecento, gave an appreciative reception
and liberal patronage to science, literature, and art.
Unfortunately, however, Hungary was able to enjoy the
blessings of this advanced culture for but a short time; two
troubled centuries followed, filled with continual and ener-
vating struggle with the Ottoman power. The more for-
tunate West was protected from a Turkish invasion by
the resistance of Hungary. While the Western states were
able to progress uninterruptedly in education and material
strength, Hungary bled from so many wounds that for a
long time it was stagnant in its development in every field.
That is why Hungary was no longer to be found in the
front rank during the renewed spiritual activity of the
eighteenth century and during the struggles which accom-
panied the economic movements of the nineteenth century;
that is why, in the rivalry of the nations, this country, in
spite of its most zealous efforts, must still find that it can
394 MEMORUL VOLUME
regain but slowly the strength which it has lavished upon
centuries of combat for Europe.
Today, perhaps, this is perceptible only in the economic
field, where the gathering of strength must take place slowly
and gradually; during the eighteenth century even the flood
of spiritual movements had a feebler and less stimulating
effect upon this country.
Also, the desire and the need for statistical investiga-
tion did not arise so early in Hungary as in the Western
European states. It is true that one or two savants turned
with interest to the new study, but their activities did not
awaken great enthusiasm. It is possible, indeed, to mention
men belonging to as early a period as the seventeenth cen-
tury, who, in works which were doubtless little read, stored
up statistical information. It was not until the end of the
eighteenth century that the first statistical work of this
nature appeared from the pen of Martin Schwartner, a pro-
fessor of the University of Pest; this measures up to the
standards of statistics obtaining at that time, and is dis-
tinguished both for richness of material and for excellence
of treatment.
The store of data contained in this, the first body of Hun-
garian statistics, was not yet the result of official statistical
work, but was based partly on investigations made for
administrative purposes, partly on private studies by the
author.
Soon afterward official statistics for Hungary came into
existence, although they did not arise in that country; they
were collected under the auspices of the Imperial and Royal
Direction of Administrative Statistics at Vienna.
The clear legal relationship between the two countries,
Austria and Hungary, living under a common head, and
also the independent existence of Hungary as a state, were
at that time threatened by strong centralistic efforts. Even
in the second third of the nineteenth century Austrian
statistical organizations still concerned themselves with
Hungarian material.
HUNGARY 395
The cause of statistics did not gain much by this union.
The public furnishing the data did its part discontentedly
for foreign officials; the activity of native experts, which
showed a gratifying increase, was paralyzed by their inability
to influence official statistical administration.
It is true that in 1848, in connection with the formation of
the first independent and responsible Hungarian ministry,
some thought had been given to the formation of a statistical
department in the Ministry of the Interior. In a short time,
however, the clash of weapons put an end both to the activity
of the ministry and to that of the little statistical department.
During the 60's, when Hungarian science developed with
continually increasing force, and when many a cultured and
learned student of statistics was to be found, the need for
official statistics made itself more and more strongly felt.
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences pledged itself to devote
the strength of the society to accomplishing through private
zeal that which, as is well known, only the well-supported and
imperative power of the state is capable of doing. The
undertaking did not get beyond the experimental stage,
partly because the state hastened soon afterward to institute
an official statistical organization; we have nevertheless con-
sidered it worth while to mention this attempt, as a char-
acteristic example of the fact that Hungary was kept, for a
while, from the creation of official statistics, only by the
compelling force of external circumstances, and not by
the lack of a proper spirit and of a clear recognition of the
importance of statistics. Efforts were made which even
exceeded the strength that was at command, solely in order
that a body of statistics might be created.
Finally, in 1867, the revolution in political life created an
official Hungarian statistical organization as a department
of the Ministry for Agriculture, Industry, and Trade. Of
course this was a modest beginning with only scanty material
resources, which became still less a few years later during a
critical period in the state household. Nevertheless, the new
creation began its existence with lofty plans and considerable
396 MEMORIAL VOLUME
success. It rapidly laid down the lines of regular investiga-
tion, carried out a census, attempted a study of industrial
statistics, and even participated in international statistical
work by taking charge of the statistics of wine-growing in
the group of publications planned by the Congress. It also
exercised vigorous efforts to bring into existence local and
provincial statistical organizations. Thus, not long after-
ward, the Statistical Bureau of the capital and residence city
of Budapest arose; this soon became a worthy co-worker,
doing valiant service in the international as well as in the
home field. Thus, moreover, the autonomous Croatian-
Slavonian Statistical Office was created, which began to
collect statistical material on Croatia and Slavonia according
to the desires of the Hungarian Central Office, but also in
order to meet the special needs of the two provinces.
When the International Congress met at Budapest in
1876 — the last one to assemble in that city, it found that
Hungarian official statistics had already gathered strength
and attained a high degree of development. In 1871 the
Ministerial Department had been metamorphosed into a
more freely moving independent Statistical Office. The
path of its activity had been levelled by regulations of mod-
ern origin; even the laws had made proper provision for it,
when Article XXV of the Laws of 1874 instituted the first
local regulation of Hungarian official statistics. A con-
stantly increasing group of writers concerned themselves
with the instructive results obtainable from the information
gathered by the new office. Popular statistical courses were
introduced into the University of Budapest; these were
intended not only for university students but also for public
administrative officials and others who were interested, in
order that among those who did not carry on active coopera-
tion, but who merely furnished the data of statistics, this
science, which had continually to struggle against prejudice,
might find appreciation and popularity. Gradually the
pubhcations of the Statistical Office accumulated, becoming
an instructive source of information for the Hungarian state,
HUNGARY 397
which was then going through a modernizing process. It
was already possible to receive the foreign guests at the Inter-
national Statistical Congress with a host of publications on
Hungary, printed in the German and French languages, as
well as in the Hungarian.
The watchful heads of Hungarian statistical work rapidly
introduced improvements in statistical technique into this
country; sometimes they stood in the very front rank of
technical progress. The system of individual sheets was
used as early as 1880, in connection with the general census.
During the general census of 1890 the method applied to
the statistics of business enterprises created attention.
However, the new office had to devote all its technical
ability, all its skill in statistical methods, to the solution of
home problems which came upon it like a flood. Hungary
is not a unilingual country; differences in language are often
associated with glaringly expressed racial contrasts; these in
their turn usually react upon economic and cultural condi-
tions; and all this is intertwined — again not by chance, but
for the most part in a causal connection — with the religious
confession. Mother tongue and religion are thus such
important and characteristic qualities of the population that
not only censuses, but almost all investigations which go into
any factor of economic or cultural development, depend
upon their determination. For this reason alone Hungarian
statistical investigations are of necessity considerably more
laborious than those of other states. Furthermore, from the
fact that Hungary and Austria have a common customs bor-
der, determined by agreement, another great difficulty of
Hungarian statistics results: the cooperation of custom
houses cannot be obtained for the determination of export
trade, since from the data of the service the exports of neither
of the two states are separately determined. As a result,
the Hungarian export statistics require special and compli-
cated procedure and the constant cooperation of the trade.
Austria is struggling with the same problem. In order that
these difficulties may be attacked with united forces, agree-
398 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ments have been entered into by the export trade statistical
services in both states, and as a result there is an exchange of
experiences; these are worthy of attention from the point of
view of international statistics, as well as from that of
domestic utility, and may serve as a very instructive example
in all efforts for the statistical study of international com-
merce.
It should also be mentioned that in Hungary statistical
investigation is concentrated chiefly upon oflBcial statistics;
other studies are heard of less frequently, or they are less
systematic. Consequently, the official statistical investiga-
tions in this country must be more specialized, and must go
into minor details to a greater extent than anywhere else.
(Through ignorance of the situation, many protests have
arisen because of this fact.)
All these struggles signify, even today, a characteristically
heavier burden placed upon Hungarian official statistics,
which weighed upon them with double force during the first
part of their existence, when they were still in uncharted
waters, and when the strength of statistical work was
still limited by the unfavorable nature of the material. In
order to carry on its greatest permanent work — ^the export
trade statistics — the statistical organization has since 1881
obtained its means in a pecuUar manner. The senders and
addressees of goods, in connection with the declaration
necessary for statistical piu-poses, pay a slight fee, and thus
the expenses of commercial statistics are borne by the group
which benefits directly by them — the Hungarian merchants.
When the conditions in the state household took a more
favorable turn, however, a constantly more satisfactory
allowance was made to the other branches of statistics, as
well as to this, and the Hungarian Statistical Office con-
stantly went further in the extension of its field of action,
the strengthening of its organization, and the increase of the
number of its scientific works.
It has now carried out five great general censuses — those of
1869, of 1888, of 1890, of 1900, and of 1910— in which, besides
HUNGAEY 399
the determination of the usual data, it has in each case
illuminated a different detail of economic and social life by-
means of special groups of questions.
The introduction of export trade statistics was regulated
by the Law of 1881, and its development by the Laws of 1895
and 1906. Since 1900 the preparation of information con-
cerning trade with Austria is carried on in cooperation with
the neighboring state, as has been mentioned above. The
method of preparation has, since that time, experienced
repeated changes and improvements.
The compilation of statistics of agricultural production,
which are of such importance in Hungary, is improved from
year to year. In 1895, on the basis of a special act, a great
statistical study of the agricultural industry was undertaken.
The exemplary development of vital statistics dates from
the same year. Statistics of public instruction, criminal
statistics, and a long series of other more or less important
statistical branches, were all taken up and extended in rapid
succession, as soon as a more favorable material situation
made this possible.
Statistical publications have also been increased and per-
fected, and at the same time have answered more and more
to the need of rapid publication.
As the limits of Hungarian official statistics were contin-
ually broadened, the legal regulation of 1874 was seen to
set too narrow limits. Therefore in 1897 a new act was
passed. Article XXXV of the Laws of that year. This
opened up the possibility of further development, making
statistics such an important adjunct to the life of the state as
it can hardly be found to be anywhere else.
Hungary, which for so long a time dispensed with sta-
tistics entirely, now appreciates their value all the more.
The Central Statistical Office of the Kingdom of Hungary
already finds itself cramped by the palace built a decade
and a half ago, which, it was beUeved, would be adequate
for a long time; it will soon be necessary to build a new
home for the Office. Its staff of officials is constantly in-
400 MEMORIAL VOLUME
creasing, and fulfils all requirements regarding technical edu-
cation. The statistical investigations carried on by the
Central Office embrace the whole great field of cultural, eco-
nomic, and population conditions, and the results of its
work are rapidly transmitted, by means of instructive pub-
lications, to that portion of the public which is interested.
A discussion of Hungarian official statistical organization,
and of modem statistical activity, will be given later. Here
let us simply recall with due recognition and reverence those
names with which this admirable development is associated.
The Kingdom of Eternal Rest has already received Karl
Keleti, the first organizer, whose great ambition and, as it
were, prophetic belief, were associated with the extraordi-
narily rich fruitfulness of a learned spirit, and his successor,
Josef von Jekelfalussy, who directed the work of further
development and organization with great zeal and with
an iron will. Besides these men, the cause of Hungarian
official statistics has also to mourn the following who are
departed: Leo Beothy, one of the first and most talented
pioneers of sociology, which has since his time enjoyed a
very marked development; Anton Vizaknai, whose technical
improvements and splendid administrative genius left per-
manent marks on all sides, while his deep learning mani-
fested itself especially in the field of vital statistics; Zoltdn
Rdth, who made himself known as a theorist and social stat-
istician; and Josef von Korosy, who organized and brought
up to a high level the Bureau of the capital and residence
city of Budapest.
The modesty of the living forbids me from mentioning
them in further detail. Let this, however, be said — that
the heritage of Keleti and Jekelfalussy was taken over by
Julius von Vargha* and that the great development of the
Central Statistical Office of the Kingdom of Hungary which
took place during the last decade and a half was brought
* During the writing of these lines Julius von Vargha was named Secretary
of State of the Royal Hungarian Ministry of Trade; his successor has not yet
been appointed.
HUNGABY 401
about through his labors, while Gustav Thirring has become
the worthy successor of Josef von Korosy in the statistical
service of Budapest.
II
In an attempt to depict the present status of Hungarian
official statistics, it is above all necessary to discuss the
act dealing with the Central Statistical Office of the King-
dom of Hungary, Article XXXV of the Laws of 1897, as this
is the basis of the modern organization and the starting
point of all further development.
The provisions of Article XXXV, 1897, can be divided
into three main sections. The first section provides the Office
with all means and guarantees that are necessary to assure
the scientific and professional character of its activities,
and that characterize their main tendencies; the second is
designed to keep the course of statistical investigations undis-
turbed, in spite of all the usual hindrances; and, after the
law has formulated fairly strict regulations in this respect,
the third section guards the proper interests of the public
against possible abuses on the part of statistical investigators.
Among the regulations of the first group we may give
immediate attention to Paragraph 1 of the Law, which ex-
presses the functions of the Office as follows: "The accu-
mulation of evidence on general conditions and matters of
common interest as they change from year to year, as well
as the collection for this purpose of more and more complete
and reliable information; the examination, arrangement,
and preparation of data; and their publication in such a
manner that, they may be utilized both for scientific and
for government, administrative, and other practical pur-
poses. For purposes of comparison the Central Statistical
Office of the Kingdom of Hungary shall obtain international
data, and on the other hand it shall also be the duty of the
Office to advance the interests of international statistics
through its own activities."
Under the terms of this law the field of activity of the
27
402 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Central Statistical Office is extended over the entire King-
dom of Hungary. In Croatia and Slavonia, however, which
together form a more or less autonomous state within the
kingdom, the Office does not exercise its right of direct col-
lection of data under Paragraph 2 of the Law, but the
Croatian-Slavonian independent statistical office places the
necessary information at the disposal of the Hungarian Cen-
tral Office in proper form. In practice it develops that the
Central Statistical Office of the Kingdom of Hungary carries
out directly in Croatia and Slavonia only certain of the
more important investigations (export trade statistics, rail-
way statistics); as regards the rest — even the population
censuses — ^it is satisfied to have the autonomous statistical
bureau place at its disposal the information which it has
obtained by the same methods as are employed in the
Hungarian Central Office.
Important aids to the scientific activity of the Central
Office are its library and its collection of maps, which have
been open to the public since 1897. Since that time, under
the terms of Article 4 of the Statistical Law, this library has
received one copy of all Hungarian publications except those
of a purely literary nature. Aside from these compulsorily
rendered home pubHcations, the material of the library is
also enriched in a gratifying manner through works received
by exchange with foreign scientific societies and particularly
with statistical offices. Besides the occasional acquisition
of publications on a large scale, the library expends 10,000
crowns a year in the purchase of the better products of for-
eign literary activity in the fields of politics, political
economy, sociology and statistics. In these branches the
library of the Central Statistical Office is, indeed, the most
richly supplied of the Hungarian public libraries of today.
Its 118,132 books and pamphlets embrace other depart-
ments of science also, although to a lesser extent. The plan
of rearranging the library and compiling a new catalogue is
now under consideration.
In order to guarantee the successful activity of the Cen-
HUNGARY 403
tral Statistical Office the Law (Pars. 6 and 7) provides, as
regards the official personnel, that the administration and
the preparation of reports and scientific studies shall be car-
ried on by officials with an academic education, while the
obtaining, general preparation, and general mathematical
treatment of data shall be carried on by employees having
an intermediate education. One third of the officials hav-
ing an academic education may possess diplomas in medi-
cine, engineering, or economics, or diplomas giving them
the professorial rank. As a matter of fact, however, the
work of final preparation and report is carried on almost
entirely by officials who have been trained in the field of
law and politics, and if technical experience and special
training are required in any statistical investigation, the
need is filled by temporary employment.
Familiarity with statistical science is tested by a written
and oral examination of officials. The law requires only
that they shall pass such an examination within one year
after they have entered upon their duties. There are usu-
ally, however, so many candidates who have passed the
examination and who aspire to a position that the require-
ments of the Law have become still more severe in practice,
and for a long time no one has had a chance of being ap-
pointed who has not previously passed the technical sta-
tistical examination. This examination, it may be added,
tests with adequate thoroughness the candidates' knowl-
edge in statistics and in the allied sciences.
Paragraph 5 of the Law concerns the publications of the
Office. Besides occasional irregular volumes, lists of offi-
cials, directories of places, etc., the monthly publications
form one special group, the successive volumes of the "Un-
garische Statistische Mitteilungen " form another, and
finally special mention should be given to the "Ungarisches
Statistisches Jahrbuch" and to the government report con-
nected with it.
The monthly publications of the Central Statistical Office
comprise two periodicals, one dealing with the periodical
404 MEMORIAL VOLUME
status of the export trade, and the other with such of the
more important phenomena of population and of economic
Hfe as furnish information suitable for monthly statement.
The "Ungarische Statistische Mitteilungen " form a
continuous series published in three languages — Hungarian,
German, and French. They consist of four or at the most
five volumes per year, each one of which is devoted to the
results of one of the more important statistical investigations,
including copious tabular matter, a more or less extensive
textual discussion according to the nature of the subject, and
frequent graphs and pictorial illustrations.
This series of publications includes two volumes recurring
from year to year. One of these is concerned with the Hun-
garian export trade and the other with the shipping and
commerce of Fiume, the only important seaport in the
country. The same group of publications includes the
general census reports. During the past decade two vol-
umes have appeared on this subject, and the rest will follow
in rapid succession. During the same period three volumes
have appeared on vital statistics and two on criminal sta-
tistics. Furthermore, this collection is enriched by the
volumes appearing at various times and dealing with other
important investigations (for example, agricultural pro-
duction, cattle census, public instruction, mill industry,
credit institutions, autonomous government, statistics of
prices, etc.).
The most important publication of the Hungarian Sta-
tistical OflBce, however, is the "Ungarisches Statistisches
Jahrbuch," which sets forth annually the principal results
of the general statistical investigations (as well as of those
mentioned above), together with any other characteristic
information upon the general condition of the country.
This also is published in Hungarian, German, and French.
The year-book deals with all aspects of national conditions,
and, in order that it may be a still more truthful reflection
of the statujs of the country, the Law provides that it be
supplemented by a textual report discussing the activity of
HUNGARY 405
the ministries and the general situation, and that every
year, in connection with the consideration of the budget
for the following year, this work be presented to the Par-
liament by the Prime Minister. The reports on the
ministries are prepared by the holders of the various port-
folios, while the text concerning the general condition of
the country originates in the Central Statistical Office;
the work of final editing is carried on by a mixed commission
under the chairmanship of the Director of the Central
Office. Through these supplements the year-book not only
increases in scope, but gains, so to speak, a constitutional
significance, and becomes a parliamentary document — an
annual official report on the Hungarian state. (The inte-
gral parts of the year-book which have been mentioned
above appear in the Hungarian language only.)
The second group of regulations of the Statistical Law is
intended, as has been stated, to guarantee the undisturbed
course of investigations. It provides, in the first place,
for suitable instruments of inquiry (Par. 8), and requires
elementary school teachers in the agricultural communities
to act as census enumerators, in return for proper compensa-
tion, not only in inquiries concerning public instruction but
also in other general investigations. This duty is not placed
upon teachers in cities, because in the formulation of this
law the hope was entertained that enough sufficiently intelli-
gent candidates outside the ranks of teachers would be found
in the cities to constitute the required number of enumer-
ators. It seems, however, that this was an error, because
the intelligent class in the cities is for the most part occupied
with professional activities which are dependent upon con-
siderations of time, and consequently lacks the leisure to
cooperate in statistical inquiries. Thus it was found neces-
sary, in connection with the Census of 1910, to pass a special
law providing that municipal school teachers are also re-
quired to take over the duties of a census enumerator.
The measure of the compensation to which reference has
been made varies with the nature of the study; there is
406 MEMORIAL VOLUME
similar variation in regard to the question of who is to
bear the burden of compensating the enumerators. In
investigations, which are above all in the interest of the
state, it is usual to compensate the census enumerators
out of the state exchequer. In the population census,
however, the instructive results of which are equally bejie-
ficial to the state and to the communities, the latter usually
cover the costs of local work, while the expenses of central
preparation and publication are borne by the state.
Paragraph 9 of the Statistical Law expresses the obligation
of all citizens to furnish data, extending this duty not only
to public offices and officials but also to societies, companies,
and private persons (with certain limitations, in the case of
the last group, which will be explained below).
For the purpose of control over the correctness with which
data are furnished, the Law (Par. 10) empowers the Statis-
tical Office to satisfy itself of the value of the information
obtained by a consideration of the records, evidence, etc.,
of local authorities, institutions xmder official supervision,
and private undertakings, and even to look into the account
books of such undertakings as the administrative authorities
have a legal right to supervise.
Every person furnishing data is responsible for providing
the information required of him at the proper time and,
according to the best of his knowledge, in correct form.
If anyone omits to present statistical data after a proper
demand, they may be obtained by the Centrail Statistical
Office at his expense (Par. 11); but if anyone knowingly
furnishes false or incorrect information the royal district
court of proper jurisdiction may take action against him
for infringement of the Law (Par. 13), and a fine up to the
limit of 100 crowns (about $20) may be imposed. If the
carrying out of a statistical inquiry is impeded or hindered
by spreading false reports, the ofifenders may be con-
demned to bear all the damages, as well as the costs of
a second investigation (Par. 14).
As may be seen from the foregoing, the successful admin-
HUNGARY 407
istration of Hungarian official statistics is assured by ade-
quately strict regulations. However, in order that these
measures, taken in the interest of statistics, may not degen-
erate into a source of general annoyance, the Law places
suitable bounds upon statistical activity, and gives proper
guarantees to those who furnish information.
The most important of these guarantees consists in the
complete exclusion of certain information from the sphere
of statistical investigation, by means of an express prohibi-
tion. This applies to all information concerning the total
income or property of private individuals, or such of its
components as are not outwardly determinable, as also to
that which concerns the internal conditions of family, social,
and moral life.
However, any information which does not enter this
forbidden ground can be ascertained by the Central Statis-
tical Office only after it has presented to the Parliament,
through the medium of its superior authority, the Minister
of Trade, detailed proposals for the collection of data, and
after the latter has accepted this program. Here, then,
we have the second point of contact at which the activity
of the Central Office is correlated with the highest consti-
tutional forum. We have already seen that the Office pre-
sents the results of its work first of all to the Parliament,
in the form of the "Ungarisches Statistisches Jahrbuch"
and the report on the general condition of the country.
Here, however, we have a clear indication that the Parlia-
ment is also the first to obtain knowledge of the program
of its work.
This measure is a great guarantee to those furnishing
data, because, before the initiation of an investigation,
the Parliament thus has an opportunity to consider whether
it is necessary from the standpoint of the common interest,
whether it entails unnecessary annoyance, and whether it
is worthy of the application of the stringent regulations
which assure the regular course of providing information.
An appeal may be made to the Minister of Trade against
408 MEMORIAL VOLUME
any decisions of the Central Statistical Office regulating the
furnishing of data, its local control, or the payment of costs
by individuals omitting to tender the proper data.
Revising information and obtaining it from local sources
may be done only by special officials of the Office, in order
that the public may obtain a guarantee from their rank
and from the better possibility of making them responsible.
Besides the fact that those who furnish data in the com-
mon interest must be guarded from superfluous annoyance,
they must also be secured from moral or material hurt in
making a truthful statement of the facts. Consequently
the law provides that statistical statements shall not be
taken as a basis of apportionment of taxes, and requires
that the Central Office publish its information, dealing not
with individuals, but only according to territories or subjects
(with the exception of publications having the nature of a
directory, and of information on individuals which would
otherwise receive publicity).
In order that the public may suflFer from no indiscretion
on the part of employees and members of the Central Sta-
tistical Office, the Law fixes imprisonment up to the limit
of two months and a fine not exceeding 600 crowns as the
penalty for those who disclose to outsiders any statistical
information coming to their knowledge during their em-
ployment in the work of investigation or preparation; more-
over, it compels them to render compensation for any dam-
age which may result.
This organization, with which we have concerned our-
selves in such detail because it shows many individual traits
and differs in many respects from the statistical organization
of other states, has served since 1897, as has already been
pointed out, as the basis of Hungarian official statistics.
From the experience of 17 years, then, it may be praised
as being completely adequate, as not hindering thei freedom
of movement of statistics, and as outweighing, by proper
safeguards, the burdens placed upon the public.
On the basis of this organization Hungarian investigations
HUNGARY 409
have constantly become more direct, and the contact of the
Central Statistical Office with private persons has undoubt-
edly had an educational influence upon them, developing
their interest in statistics.
At present Hungarian official statisticians are carrying
on the following continuous investigations, besides the
periodical censuses:
1. Vital statistics, compiled since 1895 by individual
cards for every marriage, birth, and death. The results are
published in combined form for each month and year, as
well as for longer periods.
2. For the determination of movements of the population:
The statistics of travelers' passes, of emigration, immigra-
tion and re-migration, and the statistics of personal traffic
across the boundaries between Hungary and Roumania
and between Hungary and Servia, on the basis of the
data furnished by home officials, which is supplemented
by information from the European ports of trans-oceanic
traffic and by the reports of the American Bureau of Immi-
gration. The results are published at monthly and at yearly
intervals.
3. The statistics of public health, with information on the
organization of medical officers, on hospitals, health resorts,
vaccinations, etc., with annual publication of results.
4. Agricultural statistics, which are divided into a num-
ber of branches: The distribution of the areas covered by
the various products, the cultivated area destroyed by the
elements, the average productivity, the statistical deter-
mination of wine growing and of the wine harvest, and in
more recent times the statistics of the so-called Bulgarian
nurseries. The results are published annually, and, in
collected form, for longer periods.
5. The statistics of hunting, with particular attention to
the utilization of hunting territory and of game.
6. The statistics of fluctuations in the size of real estate
holdings — ^for the present only that part of the statistics
which concerns properties of medial and large size. This
410 MEMORIAL VOLUME
investigation in its full scope is still in the stage of organiza-
tion and preparation.
7. The statistics of cattle markets, with particular atten-
tion to the number of animals driven to these markets and
sold there. Publication monthly and yearly.
8. The statistics of market prices, covering the prices of
the more important articles of consumption, and particularly
of food articles in the more important markets. Informa-
tion is pubUshed monthly and yearly. A short time ago the
Central Statistical Office published a volume of considerable
size on the statistics of prices, which took foreign as well as
domestic price fluctuations into consideration. All domestic
sources which could be drawn upon for the determination of
prices were utilized. In connection with this work the
reform of methods of determining price statistics came up for
consideration, and will be one of the studies of the near
future.
9. The statistics of mining and smelting, with annual
pubKcation.
10. The statistics of representation of industrial and com-
mercial interests. Publication is annual; every five years,
however, there is a more detailed investigation, the results
of which are pubhshed in a separate volume.
11 The statistics of industrial stock companies, with
annual publication.
12. The statistics of the productivity of mills, with annual
publication of data. A more extensive monographic study
of the entire milling industry, in a special volume, is usually
made at intervals of ten years.
13. The statistics of strikes occurring in mining, industrial,
and transportation enterprises, with annual publication.
14. The statistics of agricultural accidents, with annual
publication of data. Formerly the scope of action of the
Central Statistical Office included the other branches of
industrial accidents, as well as the statistics of workingmen's
sick benefit. In 1907, however, these were taken into the
HUNGARY 411
sphere of activity of the State Workingmen's Insurance
Office, which was created at that time.
15. The staitstics of pawnbroking estabhshments, with
information concerning the amount of their business and of
the interest obtained, with annual publication.
16. The statistics of foreign trade, the greatest work
carried on by Hungarian Statistical forces both as regards
scope and as regards matter. Publication is at monthly
and yearly intervals. The report of the activity of the
Hungarian Permanent Commission for the Determination
of Export Trade Values is also published annually. The
minor branches of export trade statistics are: The statistics
of marine shipping (also with monthly and annual publica-
tion of data), the statistics of grain transportation at the
Budapest railway and shipping stations (which are published
daily), and the statistics of grain supplies in the warehouses
(which are published at weekly intervals).
17. Railway statistics, which are published annually.
18. The statistics of credit institutions, which are pub-
lished at yearly intervals, but also in special volumes for
larger periods.
19. The statistics of cooperative associations, covering
societies for cooperative production, consumption, selling,
etc.; published annually. (The statistics of cooperative
credit associations are carried on by the Central Office in
connection with the statistical study of institutions of credit.)
20. The statistics of insurance institutions, with annual
publication of data.
21. The statistics of fires, with annual and monthly publi-
cation and with special pubhcations at various intervals
combining a number of previously published works.
22. The statistics of public instruction, which form one of
the greatest studies of the Central Statistical Office and
cover all institutions in the service of instruction, from
institutions for the care of children up to those of academic
rank, as also the subjects of care and compulsory education
of children, boarding schools, etc. That part of the statis-
412 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tics which concerns the teaching staff is particularly instruc-
tive; in all forms of institutions this is obtained by means of
individual cards . Publication takes place annually ; a special
volume has been completed on the development of public
instruction.
23. The statistics of public museums, picture galleries,
and libraries, with annual publication.
24. Statistics covering church and religious life, as well as
persons not having any confession; with annual publication.
25. Statistics of law. As regards the relation of the citi-
zen to the law, these are (with the exception of the statistics
of divorce carried on on a larger basis) confined principally
to the gathering of information on business affairs; in con-
nection with criminal statistics, however, they contain all
those details which are necessary for the knowledge of this
important branch of social statistics. Publication takes
place annually, while criminal statistics are published in
special volumes at intervals.
Besides these regular continuous investigations, Hun-
garian oflGicial statisticians are constantly called upon for
temporary special investigations. Among these the general
censuses have already been mentioned, which take place at
intervals of ten years, and which are associated with other
investigations when there is no likelihood of clashing with
the interests of the general census. Moreover, extensive
investigations take place at various times in the field of the
agricultural industry and into the division and mortgaging
of real property; sometimes special cattle censuses are held.
In the field of sanitary statistics the following are worthy of
mention: the inquiry into the number of cancer sufferers
during the previous decade, and the investigation which is
now going on into the question of blindness; both of these
are part of international investigations. During recent
years the statistics of the political economy of autonomous
organizations also deserve to be emphasized. Two volumes
of these, dealing with the government of towns and parishes.
HUNGARY 413
have already been completed, while a third on the govern-
ment of cities is now under preparation.
Besides this work which comes to the notice of the public,
Hungarian official statistical workers have been called upon
to a considerable extent, particularly during the last decade,
in the preparation of the necessary statistical bases for
government regulations, bills, etc. In former times, because
of the narrow scope of statistical observations, there was less
possibility of preparing legislative measures under the influ-
ence of statistics. However, the more the treasury of data
in the Central OjBBce grew, the more useful it became.
The Hungarian Central Statistical Office carries on its
function with a budget of almost a million and a half crowns.
The number of its officials is 122, of whom 27 have com-
pleted academic courses and are capable of administration
and final utilization and scientific treatment of the material,
while the remaining 95, who have been trained in inter-
mediate schools, carry on the work of general preparation
and the other technical labors. Besides the regularly em-
ployed officials, 200-300 temporary employees, varying in
number according to the necessities of the situation, help
to master the enormous quantity of information which
reaches the Office.
HI
It is difficult to enter into prophecies concerning the tasks
and plans of the future. Hungarian official statistics have
now entered into so intimate a connection with existence that
those ideas of reform which appear in Hungarian social and
political life are also characteristic in their effect upon the
work of the Central Statistical Office. Only with this in
mind does the Hungarian Statistical Office take up new
work and the further extension of its statistical observa-
tions, keeping pace with the demands and the interests of
life itself.
The mass of data has already been developed to such an
extent that it is doubtless already possible to speak of plans
414 MEMORIAL VOLUME
for the more distant future, and particularly of the intensive
cultivation of social statistics, with special reference to
housing statistics, statistics of public health, and the study
of other branches of the workingman's life. Nevertheless it
is not a misfortune if this development can take place only
solely and gradually. Meanwhile, the more important and
pressing task of Himgarian official statistics consists in
placing itself and its fruitful activity at the disposal of the
government, and of society, for the work of national reform.
So we see the extension of the field of action of the Central
Statistical Bureau in one direction today and in quite a
diflFerent one tomorrow. This apparent lack of system is
nevertheless in the service of a greater unity — in the service
of Hungary as it struggles upward, constantly improving,
constantly developing, to which statistics, with their objec-
tivity and with the rugged truthfulness of their figures,
will be of greater and greater usefulness.
INDIA
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN BRITISH INDIA
By Sik Athelstane Baines, C.S.I.
Ex-President of the Royal Statistical Society and late Census Commissioner
for India
A few years ago, an eminent Indian oflBcial of high caste,
speaking at a statistical club, laughingly remarked upon
the incongruity of his participation in the proceedings, as
"The Hindus, for over 3,000 years, had looked upon figures
and statistics with what they regarded as justifiable con-
tempt. They were a spiritual race; and regarded every-
thing of this world as a mere illusion; and therefore facts
and figures connected with the life history of nations were
matters of no concern to them." Whether the cause thus
assigned in jest has a basis in fact or not, the neglect in
question is beyond doubt. The Muslim emperors of Delhi
systematically recorded taxation and resources, but official
statistics, in the present sense of the word, are the offspring
of British rule. They originated, like the records of the
previous regime, in the requirements of the state in regard
to taxation; but the indirect scope of these requirements is,
in India, very wide. In a tropical country, essentially
agricultural, life is so simple that the masses can hardly be
reached by taxation except through the land and one or
two other primary necessaries; and to adjust the state
demand equitably upon agriculture entails an intimate
knowledge of the condition of the people on the part of the
assessing authority which it is eminently the province of
statistics to fortify and promote. Parallel with the admin-
istration of the revenue from land, salt and the like, came
the new impetus given to maritime trade with which the
government had to cope, as well as the increasing complexity
of the financial arrangements between India, China and
418 MEMORIAL VOLUME
England. Three branches of statistics, then, may be said
to have established themselves in the administration from
the outset. The extension of British rule over the interior,
which continued at a greater or less rate until the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, carried with it the admin-
istration of justice, the protection of life and property, the
improvement of means of communication, of sanitation,
education, and all the other functions of efficient govern-
ment, each contributing its quota to the rising tide of statis-
tical information. In these circumstances the field open
to investigation is unusually ample, and its exploitation is
favored by the extent to which the state has here to take
the initiative in measures of material benefit to the people
at large.
At this point it is advisable to call attention to two very
important facts bearing upon the statistics of India. First,
of the 245 millions of British India (excluding, that is, the
71 millions in Native States), less than 9 per cent, of those
over 20 years old can read and write as much as a simple
private letter. The government is therefore called upon to
do much for them which more literate communities do for
themselves. Secondly, India is one country in none but a
political sense, and its component parts differ so widely in
climate, habits and social divisions, that the aggregate of
figures for the Empire as a whole is, as a rule, devoid of
statistical value.
Now, more than 90 per cent, of the people are rural and
mainly agricultural, a fact which goes far to explain their
apathy as to book-learning. They are domiciled in villages,
which are territorial units of the nature of a parish or small
township, and of these there are over 537,000. Throughout
the greater part of India to every village, or group where
they are small or close together, is assigned an official
accountant, or clerk, who is often almost the only man in the
place who can read and write enough to fill in a simple
return. His original duty, except in Bengal, where he had
police duties, was to keep the land revenue records up to
BRITISH INDIA 419
date and to book collections, etc.; but he has long since devel-
oped into the recorder in general of all facts concerning the
village and its population upon which the authorities require
information. He is thus the primary source of statistics
concerning the individual, and is necessarily under strict
inspection and supervision. The villages are grouped into
territorial subdivisions or, in some parts of India, into
circles, which constitute the unit, so to speak of local com-
pilation, and are under experienced officials of good educa-
tion. The subdivision, in turn, forms part of a District, of
which there are 267 in India, and this is the tract which may
be considered the geographical or administrative unit of
most Indian statistics, because through the head officer pass
all the returns collected throughout his charge, except those
relating to civil litigation and the more centralized state
functions, such as those of the post office, telegraphs, cus-
toms, and maritime trade and navigation. The District
returns form the basis of those for the Provinces, of which
there are 10, exclusive of the 5 smaller ones, which are units
in themselves. In the tables for India as a whole the figures
are set forth by Provinces, except in the case of subjects of
imperial extent, such as finance, railways, meteorology,
irrigation systems, general trade, and the like. Even within
the Province, however, there are often differences, both
physical and social, which markedly demarcate one tract
from the rest, as Sind from Bombay, Orissa from Bihar, and
Upper from Lower Burma; and in analysing the returns
statistically these distinctions have to be taken into account.
As between Provinces, generally speaking, the main admin-
istrative differences relevant to statistical comparison are
found in the systems of land tenure, and consequently, in
the administration of the most important item in the fiscal
system; in the method of collecting the revenue from salt
and excise, and in the framework of local government.
For these subjects different forms of returns are required for
local purposes in each Province, but in order to render inter-
comparison possible, a general series of returns under each
420 MEMORUL VOLUME
head of statistics, and adapted to include the important
facts common to all, is prescribed by the government of
India; and on these the imperial tables are based. It should
be borne in mind that the Provinces came under British rule
at widely different dates, and, as each of the larger ones has
its own legislature, enactments affecting purely local matters
are passed as occasion demands, whilst the Acts of general
application of the government of India are only made
applicable gradually in tracts behind the rest in development
or more recently brought under British administration.
From the above general sketch it will be seen that while
full allowance is made for the great diversities in detail
necessitated by local circumstances, a far greater degree of
uniformity in the principal heads of statistics is attained
than might be expected under a system as elastic and com-
posite as is that upon which the vast population of India
is governed. At the same time, the figures as marshalled
in the excellent annual Abstracts are not invariably to be
taken at their face-value. There are, first, the pitfalls which
an experienced statistician knows he has to expect in returns
collected from so many sources, under such varied conditions,
and often including terms either unfamiliar in themselves or
evidently used in some technical sense. Then, again, com-
parison with previous years has to be conducted in the face
of frequent and sudden accretions of new territory, or the
extension of the statistical inquiry to fresh areas in the older
Provinces, as has been the case with the agricultural returns;
or, again, the greatly increased accuracy with which the
information is recorded, a factor very prominent in the
returns of births, deaths and diseases, and in those of crop-
areas and live stock. These considerations make it advisa-
ble that Indian statistics should not be taken raw, but
studied in the light thrown by the annual reports upon the
administration of each Province, or the Decennial Heport
on the Moral and Material Progress of India, presented to
Parliament under statute by the Secretary of State, the
BRITISH INDIA 421
most recent number of which refers to the decade ending
with 1911-12.
The historical aspect of these ofiScial statistics calls for
little comment. From the introduction of British rule
attention has been paid to the record of fiscal transactions
and of the sea-borne trade. Administrative statistics fol-
lowed fitfully, it is true, but keeping pace with the develop-
ment of the Province, and dating back, accordingly, to
different periods in each local series of returns. Outside the
Presidency Towns, municipal institutions became adoptive
under Acts passed about the middle of last century. About
ten years later, district and local boards were set up in the
rural parts of the country. The present system of public
instruction was organized in 1854, the year, too, in which
railways were introduced. Vaccination and sanitary in-
spection date from about 1870. The cotton and jute indus-
tries were started between 1850 and 1857, but the former
received its main impetus in 1861-2, and the latter made
its first great stride in 1874. The inspection of factories
was organized in 1881, but has since been considerably
extended; that of mines was instituted comparatively re-
cently. Agricultural statistics, as distinguished from the
administration of the land as a revenue-producing agent,
date from 1881, but have been much extended and improved
since then. The first general census of India was taken in
1881, the previous enumerations having been at different
times in each Province. The operation was repeated in
1891, 1901 and 1911. On each occasion additional areas
were brought under enumeration; the aggregate, therefore,
for the whole country cannot be compared for the different
years, and allowance is made for this in the tables published.
There is no permanent census office. Coming now to the
organization of official statistics in India, it should be ob-
served that the grouping of the various subjects, though
departmental, is more obvious and easy to understand than
under the system prevailing in England, where it is obscured
by tradition, and arbitrary from the want of central control.
422 MEMORIAL VOLUME
In India, the returns collected in the District are distributed
by the head oflScial to the appropriate branch of the local
government, to which the more specialized subjects are
reported direct. The tables for provincial use are there
compiled, and from them, the imperial returns above de-
scribed. These last are transmitted to the government of
India, in its several departments, and there formed into
tables for the whole country. As a rule, the annual returns
under each head are accompanied by an explanatory report,
in the first instance by the District Officer or the Chief of
the Department, as the case may be. This contribution by
"the man on the spot" is then dealt with in a review of a
wider scope by the Provincial government, which is in turn
collated with the rest by the Supreme government. There
are exceptions to this practice where the subject calls for
more general treatment, as in the case of imperial finance,
foreign trade, the army, railways, meteorology, and the like,
which come directly before the government of India.
The partition of the administration into departments is
not uniform throughout the Provinces, and the allocation
of the different subjects varies, accordingly, though not
enough to confuse the non-official inquirer. The govern-
ment of India administers through nine departments, of
which the Foreign and Legislative may be considered out-
side the present subject. The Army Department, again,
deals only with highly speciahzed returns, as its budget,
etc., comes under the Department of Finance. The Home
Department, as in England, is concerned with judicial and
police statistics. Under the Public Works Department come
irrigation undertakings and roads and buildings, the former
of which are reported upon directly, but the annual work
under the second head is summarized for the Provincial
governments only. Railways are under a special board,
independent of the other departments, and publishing a
separate report. The agricultural side of irrigation works
falls statistically within the sphere of the Revenue and
Agricultural Department, the engineering and finance being
BRITISH INDIA 423
dealt with as above mentioned. The revenue, too, included
in this Department, is only that from land, and is viewed
here not so much in its financial bearings as in relation to
the administration of the various systems of tenure and
assessment. Similarly, the recently introduced Cooperative
Credit Societies, which are largely patronized by the peas-
antry, are statistically under this Department, and so is
the administration of the forests. The Department of Edu-
cation has only been in existence about three years. It is
one of the few whose functions are not completely indicated
in its title, for it deals with local government, medical relief
and sanitation, as well as with public instruction. In regard
to the last named, it goes beyond the mere compilation of
returns, as it publishes, under statute, a quinquennial review
of the general progress of education in India. Finally, there
is the Department of Commerce and Industry, estabUshed
in 1905, which, as far as its statistical functions are concerned,
fills a place equal in importance to that of the Board of
Trade in England. Besides the Trade and Navigation
returns and those of Joint-stock Companies, Factory and
Mine Inspection, it receives those connected with Emigra-
tion, both internal and abroad, Cotton manufacture, and
Coal production and supply. It compiles, too, the Season
and Crop report, the Prices and Wages returns, and the
Price-Index-Numbers. The Department includes a section,
under the Director of Commercial Intelligence, mainly
occupied in the preparation of statistical matter. Indeed,
it swallowed up the Director General of Statistics, a func-
tionary appointed in 1895, with a narrow sphere of duties.
Owing to the increasing pressure of non-statistical work,
however, in the Commercial section of the Department, the
absorbed post is being revived. The most popular, and one
of the most useful publications of this Department is the
"Statistics of British India," an annual Abstract, on the
lines of those of the Board of Trade, though giving more
detail. It has been in currency for about 6 years, and now
appears in 8 parts, the titles of which have been utihzed for
424 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the classified list of returns with which this review ends.
The statistics of Agriculture are contained in a separately
published work, and among other special returns should be
mentioned that on the Mineral production of India, by the
Geological Survey, and the returns of the Meteorological
Reporter, with his review- of the year's weather.
Amongst works of a more general character, but based
upon the above statistics, the most worthy of notice are
the Provincial Administration reports already mentioned,
in which the work of every Department is summarized and
reviewed. In less detail is the annual Statement of the
Secretary of State on the Moral and Material Progress,
the decennial number of which is particularly instructive
on the general administration of India. A Statistical Ab-
stract is also published by the India OflBce, in which most of
the returns issued by the government of India are sum-
marized. In conclusion, it may be noted that the Indian
census reports, both Provincial and Imperial, are not con-
fined to the subjects to which the inquiry relates in Western
countries, but contain statistics of parent-tongue, caste,
tribe and religious sects, of the greatest value and interest
in ethnographic investigation, and otherwise inaccessible.
The following statement shows the principal statistical
reports published, annually as a rule, by the Provincial
governments and the government of India, respectively.
They are grouped as far as possible in accordance with the
arrangement adopted in the "Statistics of India" above
referred to, the agricultural statistics being appended. The
starred items are those presented to Parliament under
statute.
I. IsDtrsTBiAL: Coal Production, etc.
{a) Provincial. Mineral Production.
Factory Acts.
Wages Census, five yearly. "• Commercial:
(6) Imperial. (a) Provincial.
Price and Wages. Sea-borne Trade and Navigation.
Price-Index Numbers. Maritime Customs.
Mines Inspection Acts. Inland Rail and Road-borne Trade.
BRITISH INDIA
425
External Land Trade.
Companies Act.
Cobperative Credit Societies.
(b) Imperial.
Review of Indian Trade.*
Tables of Indian Trade.*
Accounts of Sea-borne Trade.
External Land Trade (Monthly).
Coasting Trade.
Rail and River-borne Trade.
Joint-stock Companies.
CoBperative Credit Movement, Report.
III. Commercial Services:
(o) Provincial.
Irrigation, Finance.
Irrigation Department.
Roads and Buildings.
(6) Imperial.
Railway Administration.*
Irrigation, Finance.
Railway and Irrigation, Capital
Account.*
Post Office.
Telegraphs.
rV-a. Finance:
(a) Provincial.
Revenue and Expenditure Accounts
. (Provincial and Local) .
(b) Imperial.
National Income and Expenditure.
Financial Statement.*
Home Accounts.*
Loan Expenditure, India and England.*
Estimates.*
Accounts and Estimates, Explanatory
Statement.*
Paper Currency Department.
Mint.
rV-b. Revenue:
(a) Provincial.
Land Revenue Administration.
Land Record Department Report.
Salt.
Opium (Bombay and Bihar).
Excise.
Stamp.
Income Tax.
Registration of Documents (Finance).
(5) Imperial.
Provincial Returns Summarized.
V. PoPUiATioN, Health, etc:
(a) Provincial.
Provincial Census.
Sanitary Commissioner (Vital Statis-
tics).
Vaccination.
Civil Hospitals and Dispensaries.
Lunatic Asylmus.
Emigration (indentured), Bengal.
Emigration (unindentured), Madras, un-
der Native Passenger Shipping Acts.
(6) Imperial.
Census of India.
Sanitary Commissioner.
Sanitary Measures Report.*
Hospitals, Dispensaries, Asylums, Sum-
marized.
Emigration, Indentured, Summarized.
VI. Administrative and Judicial:
(a) Provincial.
Crime and Litigation.
Police.
Prisons.
Registration of Documents (Administra-
tion).
(6) Imperial.
Administrative Divisions of India.
Summaries of Provincial Returns.
VII. Education:
(o) Provincial.
Public Instruction.
Reformatories.
Publications, and Printing Presses.
(6) Imperial.
Quinquennial Report on Education.*
Summaries of Provincial Returns.
426
MEMORIAL VOLUME
VIII. Local Government:
(a) Provincial.
Municipalities.
District and Local Boards.
Port Trusts.
AOBICTTLTUBAL STATISTICS:
(a) Provincial.
Agricultural Department Report.
Season and Crops.
Forest Administration.
(6) Imperial.
Agricultural Statistics.
Agricultural Progress Report.
Area and Yield of Main Crops.
Season and Crop Report.
Meteorological Report.
Rainfall.
Indian Weather Report.
Forest Administration.
General Abstracts:
Statistics of British India, Parts I to
VIII. Headings as in above List
(Department of Commerce and In-
Statistical Abstract relating to British
India.* (Secretary of State.)
NETHERLANDS
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN THE NETHERLANDS
By Db. C. a. Verrun Stuart
Professor of Statistics and Economics at the University of Groningen, Chairman of
the Central Commission for Statistics
As is known everywhere, the necessities of the public
service first led to the compiling of statistics, i.e., to the
quantitative determination of the extent and composition
of certaiQ qualitatively limited masses. It is only much
later that statistics have become the indispensable means
of investigating the growth and life of nations, in the demo-
graphical, ethical, social-economic and political sense and,
in a still broader meaning, for the study of phenomenal life
as far as it reveals itself in phenomena which are amenable
to observation.
The oldest statistics have reference to the extent of the
population and its economic power, in the knowledge of
which the authorities were directly interested, with a view
to the maintenance and defense of the state. Certainly
these forerunners of modern statistics are important also
from a scientific point of view. But it was the interests of
the authorities which led to their elaboration and determined
the limits of observation.
Such was the case in the Netherlands as well. The oldest
known sources of statistics ia this country are the port
censuses in several cities and the tax registers.* The needs
of the state were already equally less foreign to the response
which Graimt's "Political Arithmetic," begun in 1662,
found in this country. It was customary at that time to
meet the demands of the treasury, among other things,
through the issue of annuities by which the state raised a
*0f these there are published, among others, " Inf ormacie, " of 1514, by Professor
Fruin, which has reference to Holland and Friesland; and "Haard-Tellingen"
of the fourteenth and sixteenth century in Brabant, by Dr. Cuvelier.
430 MEMORIAL VOLUME
capital upon the obligation to pay an interest terminating
at the death of the money-lender or of the person on whose
life the annuity was taken out. The establishment of the
rate of annuities, which, from the nature of the case, were
especially taken out on the lives of young persons, was
altogether optional so long as nothing was definitely known
about the death chances of the population.
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), one of the founders of
the computation of probabilities, in 1669, was the first to
apply the laws discovered in connection with it to the lease
of life of man; and the Grand Pensionare Johan de Witt
(1625-1672) in his famous memoir of 1671 — of whose con-
tents the well-known mathematician, Johan Hudde (1628-
1704), had shown his approval — made a first attempt to
find a scientific basis for determining the purchase price of
the annuities. De Witt assumed that the chance of life of a
man at the age of 4 to 53 is constant. Taking this chance
of life as equal to one, he considers it at the age from 53-63
years as two thirds, from 63-73 years as one half, and from
73-80 years as one third. Thereupon, calculating the cash
value of an annuity at 47, he comes to the conclusion that one
gulden of annuity taken out on the life of a youthful person
represents a capital value of 16 francs. One observes that
de Witt's insight into the proportions of death at his time,
which were then no more constant than now for all persons
between the ages of 4-53 years and for both sexes, was still
very faulty. In a supplement, in which the data about the
ages of deceased receivers of annuities form the basis, he
himself comes to a different conclusion and places the capital
value at 18 francs instead of 16 — ^both amounts being con-
siderably higher than those for which annuities were sold
at that time (14 francs).
In truth, good bookkeeping of the population, which
would have offered a reliable foundation for calculations
such as de Witt wished to make, was still wanting. W.
Kersseboom (1691-1771), who deduced the first Dutch
table of deaths from the same lists of deceased receivers of
NETHERLANDS 431
annuities which had served de Witt, and from these cal-
culated the "probable number of the people" of Holland,
beginning with a specified birth figure, could only take an
arbitrarily chosen number for this purpose, so that the
population of 980,000 calculated by him and the accompany-
ing birth rate of 1 :35 has no statistical value. Nic. Struyck
(1687-1769) has collected in his writings the few demographi-
cal data known to him about our country. However, he
could not furnish very much.
This state of affairs, one can almost say of absolute lack
of regular systematic statistical observations, lasted in our
country until the end of the eighteenth century. Trust-
worthy publications did not appear during the time of the
Republic, and the data about the population, commerce,
finance, etc., must be dug up from the church registers and
archives. Also the "Kameralstatistik," which was diligently
studied in Germany and at the universities in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, found no encouragement
in this country. It is true that from 1795-1807, Prof. A.
Kluit gave lectures at the University of Leiden on statistics,
as he announced it himself, quite in the spirit of Achenwall.
But these lectures awakened very little interest, and IQuit
never established a school of his own.
The first effort of the government of the Netherlands at
statistics as such was really the summary census taken in
1795, and especially intended as the basis for determining
the composition of a general popular representation in the
Batavian Republic. This census was followed by a partial
provincial census (which had already taken place before),
until the royal decree of 29 September, 1828 (later replaced
by the law of April 22, 1879), introduced a regular deceimial
census. In addition, a plan was originated in 1801 to com-
pile general registers of births, marriages and deaths, but
it was not executed, largely as a result of the unrest of the
times.
When our country was annexed by the French Empire in
1810 the Emperor, of whom one of his officials said "Faire
432 MEMORIAL VOLUME
de la statistique c'est le meilleur moyen de plaire a Napoleon,"
ordered the intendant, Alphonse, who had been sent here, to
compile detailed statistics about our country, its inhabitants
and its means of existence. This order was complied with by
the presentation of a bulky report which so far as the most
important parts are concerned was published in 1899 by the
Central Bureau of Statistics. At the same time, thanks are
due the imperial rule for having introduced on January 1,
1812, civil registers of births, marriages, and deaths in all
communes; as a result of political complications, however,
it is only for years following 1815 that complete data under
these three demographic rubrics can be procured.
At that period the regular collection of statistical data
relating to other subjects was likewise ordained. Our first
government of 1798 had already ordered the presentation
of estimates and accounts of the state expenses, a prescrip-
tion which was preserved in succeeding constitutions. After
the recovery of our independence (towards the end of 1813),
the constitution of 1814 added the requirement (also in-
cluded in later constitutions) that detailed reports concern-
ing education and pauper relief should be presented annually.
At the same time, in 1814, a beginning was made by the
government toward obtaining some statements about pris-
oners. A royal decree of 1825 called for the regular collection
of data concerning imports, exports and goods in transit.
In this manner statistical material began to be gathered
from all sides, which was important to a knowledge of the
country and people, and Mr. Lobatto, an official of the
Department of Internal Affairs, found reason in 1825 for
asking authority from the king to publish a statistical year
book which appeared regularly from 1826 to 1849, inclusive.
Meanwhile, the government, realizing that not enough
was being done for the general statistics of the kingdom,
"having taken into consideration the importance to the serv-
ice of the kingdom as a whole and particularly to the
sciences, of compiling detailed statistics of the country,"
established in 1826, in the Department of Home Affairs,
NETHERLANDS 433
a statistical bureau which was to be governed by a committee
of three members with Mr. E. Smits as secretary. Further-
more, in the same year the provincial governments were
recommended to establish provincial commissions for sta-
tistics.
The bureau of 1826 had charge of the Census of 1829,
and a threefold collection of tables has been published as a
result of its labors; these tables contain data about the
population, commerce and shipping, live-stock, meteorology,
judicial affairs, etc. The Belgian uprising, however, speedily
put an end to its activity. Mr. Smits left for Belgium, and
although Mr. Lobatto was named as his successor, nothing
more was published of the work of this bureau.
It was first in 1848 that a new step was taken for the
purpose of organizing the oflBcial statistics through the es-
tablishment of a statistical bureau, which was placed under
the direction of Dr. von Baumhauer in the Department of
Home Affairs. This bureau, although forming part of the
Department and therefore of preponderant administrative
importance, added, in different ways, significant contribu-
tions to the development of Dutch statistics. The small
year book of Lobatto was transformed into a statistical
annual which appeared regularly from 1851 to 1868 and con-
tained more valuable contents than its predecessor; mor-
tality tables for the periods 1840-1851 and 1850-1859 were
compiled; the Census of 1849, 1859, and 1869 took place
under the direction of von Baumhauer, and his bureau no
doubt cooperated in establishing the models demanded by
law for the provincial and community reports (respectively,
in 1851 and 1852).
A centralization of the statistical observation service of
the kingdom did not take place, however, with the estab-
lishment of this bureau. The compilation of different
statistics was continued through the other departments of
the general administration. Since 1844, the Department
of Justice had published prison statistics, and judicial sta-
tistics since 1850; the Department of Finance had issued
29
434 MEMORUL VOLUME
annual statistics of commerce and shipping since 1846,
statistics concerning the finances of the kingdom since 1861;
the Department of Colonies, as a result of the prescription
of the constitution of 1848, had published a detailed colonial
report since 1851, the contents of which, from their nature,
were for the greater part statistical. Even the compilation
of dififerent reports issued by or prepared under the direc-
tion of the Department of Home Affairs, which were partly
or wholly of a statistical character, was not left to von
Baumhauer's bureau (viz. the Report on the Government
of the Insane, since 1844; the Report on Telegraphs, since
1852; the Report on Public Works, since 1844; the Report
on Meteorological Observations, since 1854; the Report on
Sea Fisheries, since 1857).
In order to bring about greater scientific unity in the
statistics, there was established in 1858, in accordance with
a recommendation of the Statistical Congress at Paris in
1855 to carry out the wishes of Quetelet, a Government
Commission on Statistics, apart from the provincial bureaus
of statistics whose establishment had been prescribed for
every province of the kingdom by the provincial law of
1850.*
This commission, which was of a purely advisory char;
acter, gave important advice to the government on different
subjects under the direction of Professor Ackersdyck.
Soon, however, it had to contend with disagreement among
the members themselves, with the result that in the compil-
ation of statistics by his bureau Mr. von Baumhauer did not
always seem inclined to carry out the majority resolutions
of the commission in the compilation of statistics in his
bureau. Their troubles led to the resignation of the chair-
*These provincial bureaus which, contrary to the original intention, were burdened
by the Provincial Councils with administrative work of a different nature and
totally foreign to statistics, had never really been developed. By degrees they
therefore lost their importance to the development of Dutch statistics. They had
already disappeared in several provinces when in 1905 the law which authorized
their establishment was repealed.
NETHEELANDS 435
man in 1860, and to the repeal of the commission a year
later.
Before continuing the sketch of the history of official
statistics, mention must be made in a few words of a fact
more or less coincident with the establishment of von Baum-
hauer's bureau, and which was to yield results important
to the development of our statistics, namely, the formation,
on the ihitiative of Professor de Bosch Kemper, of a small
circle of statisticians, which, originating in 1849, quickly
grew into the Union for Statistics, and was formally or-
ganized in 1856. The Union first issued an annual booklet
purporting to be a periodical collection of statistical trea-
tises rather than a " statistical abstract. " Subsequently the
Union undertook the publication of broadly devised general
statistics of the Netherlands, which appeared in two large
volumes, in 1870 and 1873. Also through the discussion
at their annual meetings of subjects of an economic or
statistical nature, the members of the Union greatly pro-
moted the newly awakened interest in statistics and, as will
be seen, even tried to supply for a time the need of a statis-
tical bureau.
In 1876 von Baumhauer resigned as director of the sta-
tistical bureau in the Department of Internal Affairs and
was succeeded by the son of Professor de Bosch Kemper.
He was inspired with great zeal to aid in the development
of statistics, among other things, by the establishment of
city bureaus; he had to contend, however, with the lack of
interest in statistics on the part of the then minister, who
went so far even as to abolish the Division of Statistics in
1878, thirty years after its establishment. An attempt made
by the new government of 1879 to create an official and
permanent Central Bureau for Statistics, independent of
the other departments, was opposed by the second chamber
of the States General. But a subsidy to the above-mentioned
Union was approved. Strengthened by this means, the
Union undertook to issue various statistics of an economic
nature, and from publishing a year-book for the first time in
436 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1882, in the spirit of the "Statistical Abstract," it went so
far, with the assistance of the municipality of Amsterdam,
as to establish in 1884 its own Statistical Institute, so-called,
in the University buildings at Amsterdam, and of which
Dr. A. Beaujon, simultaneously appointed professor in
statistics, became director. This Institute issued a scien-
tific statistical periodical besides the "Jaarcyfers" (the
statistical abstract) to which was added in 1889, for the first
time, a second part devoted to the colonies.
Although the government assisted the Institute to the
extent of its power and repeatedly consulted it on matters
of a statistical nature, it soon became apparent that a private
institution lacked the necessary authority to bring about
the desirable improvements in official statistics as well as
to secure the necessary expansion in the field of statistical
observations. For that reason the Union again m-ged the
government to establish a Central Bureau for Statistics.
The ministry, which came into power in 1891, and in which,
among others, the former chairman of the Union for Statis-
tics, Pierson, had a seat, took the matter up. The ministry
dared not yet to decide upon the establishment of a Central
Bureau, after the experience had with the former motion
having the same end in view. But by a royal decree of
October 6, 1892, it called into being a Central Commission
for Statistics with which there should be connected a
bureau working under the secretary and charged with the
collection, compilation and the publishing of such statistical
data as the Commission might consider useful for practical
or scientific purposes. Dr. W. A. Baron von Verschuer was
appointed chairman of the Commission and as secretary
the writer, who had already taken up the position of tempo-
rary director of the Statistical Institute after the death
of Beaujon in 1890. As members of the Commission
were appointed representatives of science, of the depart-
ments having more particularly to do with statistics of
various kinds, and of the different great groups of social
life (among these — a remarkable fact for those days — also
NETHERLANDS 437
a representative of the social democracy). The Statistical
Institute could now be dissolved. The Central Commission
took over the compilation of the "Jaarcyfers," and the
Union for Statistics transformed itself into a Union for
Political Economy and Statistics which henceforth was to
work in the spirit of the well-known "Verein fiir SozialpoK-
tik" in Germany, and during the past twenty two years
it has contributed a great deal by its writings and discussions,
which were occasioned by the former, to the development
of social economic thought in the Netherlands.
The Central Commission, which soon undertook the pub-
lication of "Maandcyfers" (monthly figures) besides the
issue of the "Jaarcyfers" (yearly figures), began also to
enlarge the scope of statistical observation, especially in
social matters. Statistics of labor unions, of wages and
hours of labor, of the course of land prices, of the consump-
tion of articles of food and means of enjoyment, of mortality
in the different professions, of school truancy, of the relation
between prosperity (birth rate) and child mortality, etc.,
were cornpiled and published by them. Besides, it was
repeatedly called upon to aidvise the government in regard
to the Census of 1899 to which it added an enumeration of
occupations and dwellings, as well as in regard to almost all
statistics issued by or under the direction of the departments
of the general administration. According to the decree of
1892, the government was, moreover, under obligation to
confer with the Commission before modifying or extending
the statistics compiled by the different departments. In
regard to this part of the Commission's activity it need only
be pointed out that as a result of its advice the judicial and
prison statistics (respectively those of 1896 and 1899) were
thoroughly reorganized, and at the same time the so-called
"casiers judiciaires" and anthropometric descriptions in
accordance with the system of A. Bertillon were introduced.
From the nature of the case, however, the weight of the
activities of the Central Commission was directed toward
the independent collection and compilation of statistics.
438 MEMORIAL VOLUME
But its organization was not altogether suitable. After
the death in 1898 of its first chairman, the Commission at
laiSt took the initiative and approached the government
with the request that it grant Dutch statistics the kind of
organization necessary to its proper development, namely,
the establishment of a central bureau in addition to the
Central Commission. The government, at whose head Dr.
Pierson stood at that time, received the suggestion favorably,
and by the royal decree of January 9, 1899, the Commission
was reorganized and a Central Bureau of Statistics created
alongside of it. The Commission now became exclusively
an advisory board, but preserved a connection with the
Bureau to the extent that the estimates and yearly reports
of the Bureau were to be transmitted to the Commission
and forwarded by it to the government with its recommenda-
tion. Fiui;hermore, the Bureau, whose director is also a
member of the Central Commission, might not undertake
any new statistical researches or publications nor discontinue
those already existing without the authorization of the
Commission, which on its part may issue orders to the Bureau
that must be complied with, except that an appeal can be
made to the minister. The independence of the Bureau in
its relation to the government is guaranteed by the stipula-
tion that not the government- but exclusively the Central
Commission may give orders to the Central Bureau. The
writer was named as the first Director of the Central Bureau
and in 1906 was succeeded by the present director, Dr. H.
W. Methorst. In 1899 Dr. Kerdijk became chairman of
the Central Commission and was succeeded in 1905 by Dr.
Pierson, after whose resignation in 1907 the writer was
appointed chairman.
In its development the organization given to the Dutch
statistics in 1899, the main features of which we have
sketched, proved to be highly progressive. In the first place,
by the estabhshment of a Central Bureau there was realized
a centralization of statistical undertakings through the trans-
NETHERLANDS 439
fer to the Central Bureau of the statistics which until now
had been compiled by the different departments.
The Central Bureau was thus successively charged with
the compilation of the total population statistics, the elec-
tion statistics, the statistics of pauper relief, the judicial and
prison statistics, the statistics of savings banks and loan
banks, the data which the. Chamber of Labor had gathered
on socio-economic questions, the statistics of the govern-
ment finances, and those of ground credits. This central-
ization was completed in 1906, with the exception of the
statistics of agriculture, of lunatic asylums, and of com-
merce and shipping, which were still prepared and published
by the respective departments under which they belonged.
The transfer of the last mentioned group of statistics to the
Central Bureau is under way. In connection with it, a
complete revision of these thoroughly defective statistics
must be made and toward which the Central Commission
had already repeatedly urged the government to take steps
and to consider the plan worked out for this piu-pose.
Whatever inay be thought in general about the desirability
of centralizing statistical work, there is no doubt that, so
far as the Netherlands is concerned, it has served to increase
the intrinsic value of the statistics in a remarkable degree.
Moreover, the collection of fundamental facts by the Cen-
tral Bureau was in many respects improved by using the
card counting system where possible; and by preferring to
have the compilations made in this manner directly by the
Bureau from the original data without the intervention of
other officials; finally, the scope of the statistics transferred
to the Bureau were enlarged in different respects and their
usefulness increased by providing the tabular statements
with rational introductions in which the results are sum-
marized and compared with those of former years.
Beyond seeking to improve the existing statistics, the
activity of the Bureau was directed to the extension of
the regular statistical observation service, especially in the
domain of social statistics. Indeed, the development of
440 MEMORIAL VOLUME
this field is not, as elsewhere, entrusted to a separate labor
bureau but to the Central Bureau. Thus in 1899, the com-
pilation of statistics of the communal provincial finances
was imdertaken, and a beginning made in 1901 toward the
regular publication of strike statistics, statistics of wages
and working hours in government establishments, and sta-
tistics of elections of representative bodies. In 1902 the
first issue was made of a statistical labor periodical, which
originally appeared every quarter and since 1906 every
month. In 1903, an annual publication of statistics of the
oflPenses against the most important social laws was begun,
and furthermore, in 1908, in addition to a few works of an
historical statistical nature, the statistics of the public
libraries were published.
It may therefore be said that Dutch statistics are now
conducted on approved lines tending to continue their
development.* Among the measures which may prove
conducive to it there is to be noted in the first place, besides
the already mentioned reorganization of commercial statis-
tics, the introduction of the individual card system in the
population register which is expected soon to take place.
The population register was introduced into all communities
in the Netherlands by a royal decree of 1849 and was finally
provided for by the law of April 17, 1887, with the ap-
pended measures for putting it into effect. All persons,
who are actual residents of a community or have there
their usual and continued residence in it, are entered in the
communal register, with statements as to date of birth,
sex, civil standing, occupation, religious confession, and
such changes as may have occurred in several of these
particulars. In case of one- settling in a community or
departing from it, notice must be given within a very short
time, under the penalty of a fine, and in regard to births,
marriages and deaths a close relation exists between the
*The Central Bureau has under the Director 70 officials and clerks, and, without
reckoning the costs of administration, an annual budget of 120,000 francs, more
or less.
NETHEB,LA>fDS 441
registers of the registrar's office and the registers of popu-
lation, the latter containing a regularly compiled description
of the inhabitants of every community, and rendering
extremely important services to the administration in many
ways. At every decennial census the census registers are
carefully compared with the population enumeration cards,
and any errors that may have been made are rectified.
The purpose of the intended reorganization is to give the
census registers, which now exist almost without exception
in the shape of books, the form of card catalogs. A card
will then be filled out for every person at his birth or upon
his settlement in the country which will contain all kinds
of demographic particulars about his descent and his person,
data in regard to the latter being, of course, kept up or
modified when it is necessary. These cards will follow the
person in case of a change of residence as long as he continues
to live in the country. In case of death or upon departure
to a foreign country, the contents of these cards are entered
in permanent registers at the place of last residence, and
the cards themselves are forwarded to the Central Bureau
where they can be utilized for all kinds of demographic
research, and will form invaluable material for the study of
the population in regard to its composition and develop-
ment. When this reform has been completed, the Dutch
population statistics may be considered, without exaggera-
tion, as the best in the world.
Finally, in connection with the organization of the Dutch
statistics, mention is still to be made of the establishment
in 1894, at Amsterdam, of a municipal statistical bureau,
which, under the direction of Dr. Falkenburg, has developed
into a very useful force in municipal statistical matters.
The example of Amsterdam was followed in 1910 by Utrecht,
and in 1912 by 'sGravenhage.
In concluding this sketch, it may be remarked that upon
the appointment of the writer as "Secretaire-General" to
the "Institut International de Statistique, " the seat of
that body was transferred to The Hague in 1907, where it
442 MEMORIAL VOLUME
remained when he declined a renomination in 1911 and Dr.
Methorst was chosen as his successor.
At the meeting of the Institut held at Vienna in 1913 it
was resolved to unite the General Secretaryship of the
Institut with that of the International Bureau of Statistics
established by the Institut at that time. Thus this bureau
also has its seat at The Hague, and a great deal is justly
expected from it for the development of international
statistics.
In the writer's opinion, it must be acknowledged in oneway
and another that the Dutch statistics have already gained an
honorable place beside those of other countries and have
not been wanting in meeting their task, and now take their
place iu the universal movement to extend the breadth and
depth of om- knowledge in regard to the cultural develop-
ment of man, and to which they have contributed so far as
possible.
PUBLICATIONS OF THE CENTRAL BUREAU OF
STATISTICS OF THE NETHERLANDS
Annual Statistics of the Kingdom of the Netherlands:
The Kingdom in Europe, 1898, 1899, 1900 to 1913
The Colonies, 1897 to 1912
Bulletin containing monthly numbers and other information in regard to the
Netherlands and the colonies. New series, Nos. 1 to 29
Appendices to the Bulletin:
No. 2, investigation of the relation between prosperity and births and mor-
bidity in the city of Rotterdam
No. 4, the same in some cities and rural communities
Review of the Central Biu«au of Statistics, 1901 —
Contributions to the statistics of the Netherlands (new series):
Apercu sur la Hollande par M. d'Alphonse
The history of statistics in the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Statistics of Population:
Eighth general census of the population, Dec. 31, 1899, vols. 1 to 12
Ninth census, 1909, vols. 1 to 3
Appendix, vol. 1
Density of population in the communes, the provinces and the kingdom:
Appendix, vol. 2, mortality tables for the period 1900-1909, by Dr. A. J. van
Pesch
Appendix, vol. 3, the percentages of the total population belonging to the
principal religious confessions for each commune of the Netherlands
Results of the enumeration of occupation in the Kingdom of the Netherlands,
1899, vols. 1 to 12
The same for 1909
Introduction to the results of the eighth general census of popidation of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1899, and of the enumeration of occupations
and dwellings
Introduction to results of the ninth general census of population, 1909, and of
the emmieration of occupations and dwellings
Statistics of the movement of population in the Netherlands, 1900-1913
Statistics of mortality according to age and causes of death, 1901-1913
Statistics of mortality according to profession, age and the causes of death
during the years 1896-1900 and 1896-1903
Statistics of mortality according to age and the causes of death
Supplement, 1901-1904
Statistics of Libraries:
Statistics of public and popular libraries, 1908
Statistics of Bankruptcy:
Statistics of bankruptcy in the Netherlands, 1902-1912
444 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Financial Statistics:
Statistics of the income of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1903-1912
Statistics of the finances of the communes, 1896-1899, 1900-1911
Statistics of institutions for savings, 1898-1912
Statistics of mortgages, 1901-1907, 1908-1912
Judicial and Prison Statistics:
Judicial statistics for the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1900-1910
Statistics of the application of the law for the protection of children, 1912
Criminal statistics of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1900-1912
Studies in criminal etiology; No. 1, sexual criminality; No. 2, the criminality
of persons 70 years of age and upward
Prison statistics, 1901-1912
Statistics of judgments for the violation of labor laws and laws for the safety
of workmen, 1904-1912
Statistics of schools of correction and of the educational establishments of the
state, 1906-1912
Statistics of Electors and Elections:
Statistics of electors, 1901-1914 (with a supplement of statistics of elections)
Statistics of elections, 1901, 1904, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1910 and 1913
Statistics of Compulsory Education:
Statistics of the attendance and absences at primary schools
Statistics of Wages:
Survey of the wages and hours of labor in government work, 1899, 1902,
1903, 1905, 1908
Statistics of wages of workmen insured in conformity with the law relating
to occupational accidents for the Province of Gelderland, 1904
Statbtics of wages of laborers in textile industries insured in conformity with
the law relating to occupational accidents, 1908
Statistics of Prices:
Average prices of cereals at the market of d'Amhem, 1544-1901
Prices of cereals at the market of Middelburg, etc., 1901-1900
Statistics of Poor Relief:
Statistics of poor relief during 1902 to 1905, 1906 to 1911
Statistics of Trade Unions in the Netherlands, 1905, 1907-1909, 1910-1913
Statistics of Strikes and Lockouts:
Statistics of strikes and lockouts, 1904-1912
Statistics of Dwellings:
Results of the statistics of dwellings, 1899, 1909
NORWAY
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF
STATISTICS IN NORWAY
By a. N. Kiaeb
Chief and Director of the Statistical Bureau, 1867-1913
A statistical bureau was first organized in Norway in the
year 1837 as a tabulating oflBce in the Department of Finance,
with a staff consisting of a chief of division (sous chef) and
nine clerks. Since 1832 the work had been done by one
chief clerk and two subordinates. However, official sta-
tistical statements had been prepared long before this time,
among which mention should be in the first instance made
of the annual statements in regard to marriages, living births
and deaths, the data being transmitted by the pastors of the
different parishes in the country to their respective bishops,
by whom they were correlated in proper tables. These vital
statistics were begun in the year 1735 and have been printed
for each of the years 1736 to 1865 in connection with the
tables published in 1869 concerning the movement of popu-
lation from 1856 to 1865. The first general enumeration of
population occurred on August 15, 1769; but already
in the year 1662 a census had been taken for military
reasons, of all male persons from the twelfth year of age
partly to the fourteenth, and of ages above. It was called
the "Titus Bulcks Census," and contained valuable infor-
mation about the number of inhabitants of the different
districts and municipalities, and has been edited by Pro-
fessor Aschehoug and later by a member of the Storting,
Tallak Lindstbl. The population enumeration of 1769
was followed by new enumerations on February 1, 1801,
April 30, 1815, and later at the end of each decade until
1875, in which year the enumeration was postponed until
1890 in order to bring it into correspondence with the time
at which most population enumerations in other countries
take place.
448 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Beside these statistical statements of populations, there
were prepared at the instigation of the Department of Fi-
nance tabular surveys of the goods imported from abroad at
the different custom houses, as well as of the goods exported
to other countries, of the arrivals and departures of ships,
the size of the mercantile marine and its increase through
building and decrease by shipwreck. These commercial
statements are in part of quite ancient date; thus there is to
be found information in regard to the ships hailing from the
different customs ports from the years 1770-1780, as well
as in regard to imports and exports at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, although no complete tables were pub-
lished before 1835.
The basis of some of the last-mentioned statements is a
royal resolution of May 31, 1797, which decreed the estab-
lishment of a tabulating office under the Rentekammer in
Copenhagen, and here were prepared tables relating to the
movement of population, commerce, shipping, factories and
industries, censuses of population, etc.
Upon the separation from Denmark, the statistical work
was placed under the Department of Finance, Commerce
and Customs in Christiania. Meanwhile no separate sta-
tistical office existed during the first years subsequent to
1814.
In accordance with a royal resolution of 1825, which com-
manded all the governors of provinces to send in reports
concerning the condition of the districts in their charge in
general and particularly with reference to agriculture, stock-
farming, forestry and mining, fisheries, home and art indus-
tries, commerce and shipping, as well as other means of
livelihood, the Norwegian government, following the recom-
mendation of the Department of Finance, Commerce and
Customs, October 28, 1828, presented to the king the reports
received from the governors of provinces for the year 1827,
accompanied by a brief analysis together with some tables
appertaining to them. A new royal resolution of 1827
ordered that these reports should be published every five
NORWAY 449
years according to a somewhat detailed program, which,
among other things, included statistical statements for each
district concerning water- and wind-mills, steam-engines,
horses, cattle, reindeer, etc.
The first report prepared according to these regulations
was published in 1829, and consequently the next should
have been published in 1834; but as it was anticipated that
at the close of the following year a general population enu-
meration would take place, the Finance Department decided
that the term to be covered by the reports should this time
be extended to six years, but subsequently should appear
every five years as first determined.
In a statement by the Finance Department, approved by
royal resolution in 1839, and in which a new and completer
plan was made the basis of the reports in question and the
statistical data accompanying them, the department ex-
presses itself, among other things, as follows :
"It was not to be expected that so difficult and inclusive
an arrangement (as the one relating to the earlier reports)
could at once be made so complete that there should not be
occasion for several essential improvements. Especially,
while examining the reports of provinces for the purpose of
extracting from them a general siu"vey of the economic con-
ditions of the country and the trend of the means of liveli-
hood throughout the whole country, the Department came
to recognize that the statistical facts upon which the govern-
ors of provinces had based their judgment as to the condi-
tion of the provinces are so lacking in imiformity and leave
so many holes that hardly any tabular survey and compara-
tively few common and general results can be deduced."
Detailed instructions were therefore prepared contained
in seventeen different paragraphs with appertaining forms
— ^all of which are printed in connection with the report of
the Department, or of the economic conditions of the King-
dom of Norway for the five years, 1836-1840. This report,
as well as the planning of the statistical program fixed by
royal resolution of 1839, which for a number of years was of
30
450 MEMORIAL VOLUME
fundamental importance to. the economic and social statis-
tics of Norway, are due, in the first instance, to Judge Jens
Kraft who is also the author of the monumental work,
"Topographical and Statistical description of the Kingdom
of Norway," of which the first part was published in 1820,
and the last in 1835. An abridged edition of this work
appeared in 1845-1848. In this connection should be men-
tioned another conspicuous work in the field of statistics
which was published under the title, "The Statistics of
Norway," edited by A. Schweigaard. Unfortunately, this
eminent political economist, statistician and statesman did
not find time to complete it on account of his very active
participation in our public life. Only the first half con-
taining his introduction, and dealing with the means of
subsistence and population is published; but the work was
continued after the beginning of the fifties and finished by
M. B. Tvethe.
From the foregoing it will be seen that also during the
time preceding the establishment of the statistical bureau in
1837, to which reference has been made, not a little was
done, and chiefly at the instigation of the Department of
Finance, for the development of the oflficial statistics of
Norway.
With the year 1838 began the regular publication of official
Statistical Tables for the Kingdom of Norway. The first of
this series contained tables of the population in Norway as of
November 29, 1825. The result of the enumerations held in
1769, 1801, 1815, and 1825 were not at the time printed for
public account but brought out in different private works,
Materialien zur Statistick der Danischen Staaten, Flens-
burg und Leipzig, 1786, Norske Rigstidende, 1815 and 1816,
Budstikken, and other publications of which a complete
account is given in the official work appearing in 1882:
Contributions to the Norwegian Population Statistics, p. 205
et seq., in which is also given an account of the methods used
at the older enumerations.
The second series, published in 1839, contain tables of the
NORWAY 451
cultivated area and live-stock in Norway as of November
29, 1835; and the third series (likewise published in 1839),
has tables relating to commerce and shipping of Norway in
the year 1835.
Until 1860 there were in all published twenty difiPererit
series of tables covering the numbers of the population, its
movement, agriculture, live-stock, together with commerce
and shippiQg, the whole being prepared in the Statistical
Tabulating Office, which, in 1846, was transferred from the
Department of Finance to the Department of the Interior
and was conducted by a chief of bureau and nine clerks.
Aside from these series, there were pubhshed every five
years the above-mentioned reports relative to the economic
condition of the country and of the provinces, until 1851-
1855 inclusive.
All these works, with their complete titles and dates of
publication, are cited in the List of Norway's Official Sta-
tistics, together with various Statistical Works 1828 to 1889,
published by the Central Statistical Bureau in 1889.
It may furthermore be noted that in 1840 the Ecclesias-
tical and Educational Department published very extensive
statistical tables in regard to the condition of education at
the end of 1827, and that this work was continued for the
years 1840 and 1853, whereupon the statistics of schools
was incorporated as a regular part of the official statistics
of Norway.
In 1861 a new arrangement was effected by royal resolu-
tion in respect to the publication of the official statistical
works, as it was ordered that all tabular statements and
reports prepared by the different departments of the govern-
ment should be published in specific size (4°) and form a
collection under the title. The Official Statistics of Norway;
the different works to be designated according to their
subject by separate letters and numbers, which were to be
retained imchanged at each subsequent publication of the
same kind. For the purpose of this collection each Depart-
ment of the government was allotted its letter; thus the
452 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Ecclesiastical and Educational Departments received the
letter A; the Department of Justice, the letter B; the De-
partment of the Interior, the letter C. Within the letters
thus fixed, the difiFerent works were given their respective
numbers; thus the statistics of population, C 1; the quin-
quennial reports, C 2; commerce and shipping, C 3; etc., as
may be seen in the "List" just referred to. A certain num-
ber of copies of each work was to be placed at the disposal
of the Central Statistical Bureau through which the general
distribution should take place. In the course of the follow-
ing! y63,rs the number of oflScial statistical publications
increased steadily and came to include more and more
divisions of the social and economic life of our people.
In the first part of the seventies it was determined by
royal resolution, after consideration among representatives
of the different bureaus in which the various parts of the
official statistics of Norway were prepared, that in all works
belonging under them, the civil divisions should form the
basis so far as possible, while the data previously gathered
had^been furnished according to ecclesiastical or other
divisions.
As the continual growth of the material necessitated a
remodelling of the statistical organization, its chief sub-
mitted a report to the Department of the Interior in 1875
in which the desirability of giving the office a more inde-
pendent position was emphasized. This thought gained
adherence both in the government and Storting, and accord-
ingly the existing tabulating office in the Department of the
Interior was transformed into an independent institution
under this Department and named "The Central Statistical
Bureau," with a director as its head, who was given com-
paratively wide authority; in addition, the Bureau was en-
titled to its separate budget.
Its field of work includes the whole of economic statistics
except the part which is prepared imder special expert
direction (such as statistics of finance, railways, post office,
telegraph, etc.). Under the administration of the Central
NORWAY 453
Statistical Bureau were placed, furthermore, the enumer-
ations of population, the annual tables relating to the move-
ment of population, wages, and in general all the branches of
statistics which did not belong to special expert administra-
tions, among which, in addition to those already noted, may
be mentioned the medical and sanitary statistics, statistics
of insanity, statistics of recruiting, etc.
Commencing with 1881, all of the official statistical works
of Norway were published in octavo instead of the previous
quarto form. The division of the statistical publications
according to letters and numbers established in 1861 were
retained, however, until 1885 when it was superseded by a
simpler system of numbering the different works consecu-
tively after their publication.
When this new third series in the year 1900 had reached
number 345, No. 4 was begun, which ended in 1905 with
No. 130, since when until now (February 1914) there has
appeared of series No. 5, 19 different numbers, including al-
most all the fields that are subject to statistical observation.
For information about the subjects contained in these
series, reference is made to the previously mentioned hst,
published in 1889, and a new one of 1913. In each of the
later years there had been published about thirty different
works which are incorporated in the collection "The Official
Statistics of Norway"; but outside of it, there have been
published several statistical works of marked importance
and of an official character. Among these mention should
first be made of the Statistical Year Book, the first volume,
edited in French, appearing in 1879, which since has been
published regularly each year and in the latest years ex-
panded by an International Appendix prepared jointly by
the bureaus of the three Scandinavian countries. This Year
Book had, however, a predecessor, in a Statistical Hand-
book for the Kingdom of Norway published in 1871 by
the writer; also in Resume des Renseignements Statistique
sur la Norvege, officially published in 1875. Furthermore
should be mentioined the monthly publication begun in
454 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1882 under the title, "Communications of the Central Sta-
tistical Bureau," the social statistical monthly publication
"The Labor Market" begun in 1904, and the monthly sta-
tistics, dating from 1913, of the imports and exports of
Norway, which supplanted the quite summary data on the
same subject contained in the above-mentioned Communi-
cations; also the very detailed tabular statements which in
1898 to 1900 and 1907 to 1910 were published in regard to
the conditions of income in Norway, partly by parhamentary
and partly by the departmental social-insurance committee.
Finally, mention must be made of the Statistique Inter-
nationale de la Navigation Maritime, published in three
volumes in the years 1876-1887 at the request of the Inter-
national Statistical Congress. A Norwegian edition of this
work appeared in 1887 relating to the merchant marines and
in 1877 relative to the movement of shipping surveys which
so far as principal subjects are concerned have been con-
tinued in the international part of the above-mentioned
statistical works.
While the statements given above afford some idea of the
outer frame of the development which the Norwegian sta-
tistics have undergone in the course of the nearly three
generations that have passed since the first official reports
in regard to the economic conditions of the country were
published in the year 1828, it may be said that a no less
important development gradually has made itself felt rela-
tive to the objects and methods of the statistical observa-
tions.
In regard to the objects at which the observations chiefly
aim, it may be said that they, so far as economic statistics
are concerned, even a good bit beyond the middle of the last
century, were principally occupied with production, the
means of production, and values; but the question of the
conditions under which producers and their workers and
helpers live, in other words, the social side of production,
remained more in the background, although it would bie
too much to say that it was wholly overlooked. To be
NORWAY 455
sure, already as early as in the thirties and later every five
years, information was sought in regard to the wages of
servants and the customary daily pay of working men in
the different districts; but this information was of quite a
summary character and was altogether wholly overshadowed
by the very much more complete data with which it was
sought to illustrate the conditions of production in regard
to agriculture, live-stock, mining and industries, fisheries,
commerce and shipping, as well as the activity of institu-
tions for savings, the communal finances and economy of
the state. Meantime, in the course of the last generations,
social questions came more and more into the foreground, a
development which also has left its mark on the statistics
as data were continually sought for the purpose of shedding
light on social conditions, so that the statistics may be said
to be concerned increasingly with men while they formerly
in a predominating degree have been concerned with things
and values of production.
In this connection I ought not to omit mention of a Nor-
wegian sociologist and statistician who has paved the way
for our social statistics as well as for significant portions of
the population statistics. I have in mind the well-known
philanthropist and author, Eilert Sundt (1817-1875) who,
through his works Gypsies and Tramps (1850), Marriages
(1855), MortaUty (1855), the Condition of Morality (1857),
The Conditions of Sobriety (1859), Building Customs in
the Country (1862), Home Industries (1867), Hygienic Con-
ditions (1869) etc., created an original literature which is
of a very significant importance and not least in respect to
the social domain.
Of the results of the ofllcial statistics in this field it may
first be mentioned that at all censuses of population taken
since 1876 data have been obtained not only in regard to
the distribution of the inhabitants according to means of
livelihood, but also according to their independent, superior
or subordinate positions in the different branches of pro-
duction, as well as their distribution within each branch of
456 MEMORIAL VOLUME
production and occupation, by age, sex, and conjugal con-
dition.
The data which afford a completer insight into the status
and progress of wages within the different branches of the
productive life, and especially of industry, should probably
be reckoned as of more direct social significance. As not of
least significance may be counted the comparatively well-
rounded information which has been obtained for Norway
in regard to the conditions of income also outside of the
wage-earning classes proper, as well as in regard to condi-
tions of wealth; and I will even venture to assert that with-
out data that give information concerning the conditions of
income in the different strata of society, from the wage-
earning and middle class to those at the social pinnacle,
even the very full information relative to working men's
wages loses a good deal of its value. For in order to esti-
mate the importance of such data from a social point of
view, it is necessary to view them in relation to incomes in
the other social classes; otherwise there is no basis for com-
parison and the numbers remain without rational connec-
tion. Just on this account so much stress has been laid in
Norway during later years on promoting knowledge not
only about working men's wages, but also in regard to the
conditions of income and wealth as a whole; and I wish
especially to point out that a mass of information has been
obtained showing the relation between the small and large
incomes as well as how these relations appear in combina-
tion with the environment of the persons in question, their
ages, civil condition and occupation.
For the rest, the development of social statistics has also
gained expression in other ways; for instance, through data
relative to the prices of the necessaries of life, working men's
budgets, strikes, unemployment, hours of labor, etc. It
must be confessed, however, that in these respects the Nor-
wegian statistics as a whole are a good deal backward, but
the state has taken a step of great promise for the future
development of social statistics by the establishment (July
NORWAY 457
1, 1914) of a separate oflBce for social statistics under the
Department for Social Affairs, Commerce, Industries, and
Fisheries. This office is particularly to devote its attention
to the conditions of the wage-earning classes, but neverthe-
less the Central Statistical Bureau will probably not lose
sight of the social side of general statistics.
So far as statistical methods are concerned, the rule ob-
tained until 1865 that the different subordinate and superior
administrative authorities saw to the compilation and group-
ing into the prescribed statistical tables of the data gleaned
from the original documents. Thus the Statistical Bureau
had only the comparatively easy task of making some sum-
maries from the ready-made tables, see them through the
press and to a limited extent to point out the chief results
which they afforded. Meanwhile, the defects connected
with this method were recognized, namely, that an effective
control of the correctness of the material could not be
maintained as there was no opportunity for comparing
the tables received with the original data prepared by the
authorities concerned. And this was all the more seri-
ous, as these authorities, whose principal labor and chief
interests lay within other fields than the statistical, might
be inclined to consider statistics as a burden, so that
even conscientious officials and workers had no special in-
ducement to expend more labor on them than necessary.
For the same reason, the method in question necessitated
the limiting, so far as feasible, of the demands which could
be made for statistical data. If, however, the Statistical
Bureau were to gain access to the original data the most
trustworthy and at the same time the most complete utiliza-
tion of them could be guaranteed.
In recognition of this it was determined, in the first place,
that the population enumeration held at the close of 1865
should be made in such a manner that in place of the tabular
statements hitherto used nominative count should be made
of all inhabitants with notation for each individual, of name,
domicile, age, conjugal condition, occupation, place of birth.
458 MEMORIAL VOLUME
religious confession, etc. These notations, in their original
form, were sent to the Bureau division established for the
purpose, which undertook further work in regard to them.
The same system was put into effect beginning with the
year 1866, in regard to the annual data of marriages, births,
deaths and emigrants, and has gradually been extended to
most of the fields with which the Norwegian statistics are
occupied. There remains to be considered a very important
branch, namely, statistics of goods imported from abroad.
The statistical tables concerning imports are based upon
monthly summaries prepared by the different custom houses,
while both the statistics of shipping and statistics of exports
are based upon individual returns; but in regard to the ex-
ports by sea, in such a manner that a collective statement is
made for outgoing shipment of the goods of different
kinds exported, but not special returns for each individual
shipper.
It should be added, however, that several years ago the
Central Statistical Bureau advanced a proposition to intro-
duce the individual system also for statistics of commerce,
and that a law of 1907 concerning the collection of data for
the official statistics, among other things, grants opportunity
to require importers and exporters to furnish the statements
needed in the case.
In regard to methodology it may, furthermore, be remarked
that the compilation of the schedules of population, at the
enumeration for 1865, as well as those of marriages, births
and deaths in the years 1866 and 1867, was undertaken by
means of the so-called tallying system, but that already in
securing the corresponding data for 1868 individual cards
were used. This system also was utilized at the population
enumeration of January 1, 1876. Later on a further step
was taken, as the individual data communicated by the
respective officials were required to be returned on individ-
ual blanks instead of on lists; and this method was put
into effect also at the population enumeration of January 1,
1891, as well as in the case of several other data which were
NORWAY 459
adapted to a similar treatment, for instance, in regard to
the arrivals and departures of ships, crime, civil judicial
cases, etc.
After acquaintance was had with the Hollerith electrical
machines a return to the system of schedules occurred in
large measure as it was easier to punch cards from them
than from individual returns. The Hollerith system was
employed in Norway for the first time in the compilation of
the statistics of incomes and wealth for 1891 and has since
steadily been in use, although on account of the small popu-
lation of the country it proves to be comparatively expen-
sive except in connection with the census of population
itself. In regard to the statistical methods employed in
Norway it is still to be mentioned that representative (sam-
ple) investigations have been resorted to extensively which
have given satisfactory results in different fields, especially
so far as income statistics are concerned.
The oflScial statistics of Norway are at the present time
organized as follows :
There is first a Central Statistical Bureau established by
royal resolution of 1875. This institution operates inde-
pendently although under the control of the Department
for Social Affairs, Commerce, Industry and Fisheries. The
tasks to be undertaken are determined by the director of
the Bureau within the limits permitted by the appropria-
tions of the Storting and hitherto estabhshed practice. He
also has authority to appoint and discharge all the func-
tionaries engaged at the Bureau except the three chiefs
of divisions who are nominated by the king. The director,
furthermore, apportions the work among the chiefs of divi-
sions as well as among other functionaries of the Bureau.
In the fall of each year the director presents his budget
recommendation for the following term. The proposition
made is next considered by the department under whose
control the Bureau stands, whereupon the department makes
its proposals to the government which, in turn, recommends
a budget with or without changes from that advocated by
460 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the Bureau. Thereafter the matter comes before the Stort-
ing which has the final decision in regard to the size of the
budget. The budget granted for the present term (Jan-
uary 7, 1913-March 6, 1914) amounts to 135,045 kroner.
On extraordinary occasions, as in the case of enumerations
of population, agriculture, industries, special appropriations
of considerable magnitude are made, as, for instance, at
the population enumeration taken of December, 1910,
317,000 kroner; and at the agriculture census of 1907,
97,500 kroner.
The personnel of the Bureau consists of a director, three
chiefs of divisions who are at the head of the three sections
into which the work of the Bureau falls according to the
decision of the director; furthermore, twenty two first clerks
and assistant clerks and as a rule sixteen assistants are regu-
larly employed in the Bureau but without fixed appointment.
At certain times, especially in case of population enumera-
tions, the number of assistants is greatly augmented; thus
on the occasion of the last population enumeration, a sep-
arate office was established under the control of one of the
division chiefs, who received extra compensation, with a
woman as sub-manager, and where about eighty assistants
were occupied.
Aside from the Central Statistical Bureau, several bureaus
in the different departments of the government and in other
official offices are regularly engaged in statistical work.
These are the above-mentioned office for social statis- ,
tics, the statistical office of the state railways and office
divisions in the Medical Department, the Department
of Justice, the Department of Finance, the Department of
Church and Education, the Department of Defense, the
General Post Office, Telegraph Office, Navigation Office
(which prepares lists of the mercantile marine while the
statistics of shipping in general are in charge of the Central
Statistical Bureau), the State Insurance Institution, where
the annual statistics of industries are prepared (the
enumeration of manufacturing establishments, of 1909, was
NORWAY 461
in charge of the Bureau), and the Bureau of Fisheries
in Bergen which has direction of the statistics of fisheries.
Outside of the central administration there is, however, only
one statistical bureau, namely. The Statistical OflSce of the
Commune of Christiania which, among other things, pub-
lishes a valuable year book, while the Health Commission
of the same commune publishes an annual report.
With reference to the training which is demanded of the
persons to whom the conduct of the work discussed is en-
trusted, no fixed rules are prescribed. In practice, it is
required of those in charge of the higher positions of the
Central Statistical Bureau that they shall have university
training in political economy, statistics and law. In the
other branches of the administration in which statistics are
compiled no special training in statistics is demanded; but
for the rest the different administrations demand a special
professional training. In regard to the subordinate posi-
tions in the Central Statistical Bureau weight is laid, so
far as the first clerks are concerned, on training in social
economics, especially as a few years ago there were exami-
nations in political science introduced at our University.
Many functionaries in the Bureau are engaged in tasks
requiring especially exactness in calculation and a trust-
worthy character generally; their qualifications are tested
principally through the practical work with which the Bu-
reau entrusts them.
An extensive chronological and systematic list, with Nor-
wegian and French texts, was published in 1913 of the
regularly and occasionally appearing works belonging to the
official statistics of Norway from July 1, 1899, to December
31, 1910. Besides, on the covers of each number of the
collection in question is given a chronological list in both
languages of the works published in more recent years;
thus, for example, in the statistics designated as No. 219 of
the Fifth Series there is found an account of ninety one
statistical works published partly annually and partly at
intervals of years, printed in 1911, 1912, and 1913.
462 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The systematic survey below notes which works are annual
and which not:
1. Populaiion Statistics:
(a) Enumerations of Population, every ten years.
(b) The Movement of Population: annual statistics with a quinquennial
summary.
(c) Life and Mortality tables, every ten years.
(d) Divorce and Separation, occasionally.
2. Election Statistics:
(a) Elections to the Storting, every three years.
(b) Communal Elections, every third year.
3. The Statistics of Recruiting, annually.
Jf. The Civil Medical Service:
(a) Health Conditions and Medical Conditions, annually.
(b) The Lepers, quinquennially.
(c) Veterinary Affairs, annually.
(d) Hospitals for the Insane, annually.
6. Judicial Statistics:
(a) Criminal Statistics, biennially and annually, with summaries, criminal
court statistics, biennially.
(b) Statistics of Estates, biennially and annually with summary.
6. Penal Institutions and Prison Affairs:
(a) Penal Institutions, annually.
(b) District Prisons, aimually.
(c) Year Book of the prison government, annually.
7. Educational Affairs every fifth year, vnih surveys.
8. Technical Schools, annually.
9. RealEstate, Agriculture, Forestry:
(a) Real Estate, every ten years.
(b) Agriculture, Live-stock, every five years.
(c) Censuses of Agricultme, occasionally.
10. Fisheries, annually:
Insurance of fishermen (new 1909), probably from now on annually.
11. Mines, annually.
12. Manufactures, Industrial Conditions:
(a) Factories, annually, censuses of factories, occasionally.
(b) Accident Insurance 1895 to 1907, qumquennially, triennially, biennially
and annually.
13. Transportation and Communication:
(a) Railways, annually.
(b) Government Telegraph, aimually.
(c) Postal Affairs, aimually.
H. Commerce and Shipping:
(a) Commerce, annually and monthly.
(b) Shipping, annually.
NORWAY 463
15. Banking:
(a) Institutions for Savings, annually.
(b) Private Banks, annually.
(c) Stock Companies, at intervals, 1906 to 1910.
16. Social Conditions:
(a) Social Statistics: wages, every five years. Different other conditions,
occasionally.
(b) Neglected Children.
(c) Statistics of Alcohol, occasionally.
17. Insurance:
(a) Fire Insurance, quinquennially (but contains data for each year).
(b) In regard to Marine Insurance, Life Insurance, data may be found for
each year in the Communications from the Statistical Biureau.
18. Finance:
(a) Finances of the State Treasury, of which statistics are published every
five years, while a full account is rendered annually in connection with
the documents of the Storting which are not incorporated in the col-
lected official statistics of Norway.
(b) Communal Finances, annual statistics.
In this connection it may be of some use to instance some
of the oflScial works aJBfording a comparative oversight for a
series of years. As such may be mentioned:
1. Tables relative to the movement of population, in the years 1856 to 1865,
contain data beginning with 1736.
2. A survey of the movement of population, 1866 to 1885, containing a calcu-
lation of the number of inhabitants in each of the years 1801 to 1885.
3. Survey of the movement of population, 1866 to 1900.
4. Contributions to the Norwegian population statistics.
5. Survey of the most important results of the population enumerations 1891
and 1900.
6. The population of Norway 1846 to 1901.
7. Criminal statistics 1846 to 1885, and 1886 to 1904.
8. Statistics of fire insurance, 1847 to 1863, also including accounts for each of
the years 1827 to 1846.
The work mentioned under No. 6 includes for each of the
years 1846 to 1901 a statement of the population of Norway
distributed according to sex and age groups and for each
year of life. In addition, several of the statistical publica-
tions, among them the statistics of commerce, shipping,
industries, and others, are accompanied by introductory
surveys giving information about developments in the dif-
ferent fields for a series of years.
464 MEMORIAL VOLUME
When it is asked what improvements may be desirable in
respect to the future development of the Norwegian statis-
tics, I am inclined to place special emphasis on the different
subjects relating to social statistics, particularly the collec-
tion of a suflScient number of household budgets to show
the condition of consumption of the necessaries of life as
well as of luxuries in the different social strata. To be sure, a
beginning has been made, but very much is still left to do.
A cognate matter is the further formulation of the statistics
of income and wealth, of which it may be said, however, that
so far as Norway is concerned a comparatively rich material
has already been provided. Furthermore, as a desideratum
of Norwegian statistics, I would mention statements show-
ing the development of agriculture and forestry from year
to year, aside from the calculations of crops, as hitherto we
have been content with periodical studies of these means of
livelihood. Reform in statistics of commerce is also needed
by way of centralized compilation based upon the original
declarations of importers and exporters.
In respect to international statistical cooperation, the Nor-
wegian statisticians, having had an opportunity for a great
number of years, beginning as far back as 1855, to partici-
pate in international statistical congresses and conferences
in Europe and once also in the United States, have gained
so rich an experience of the importance of this cooperation
to the future development of statistics that I am confident
they for the future will continue to make use of this source of
progress. As an expression of this conviction, mention
should be made of the regular meetings for discussion by
the chiefs of the statistical bureaus of the three Scandinavian
countries, which were begun in 1889 on the initiative of the
Norwegians.
While it must be freely acknowledged that the Nor-
wegian statistics, in spite of their incompleteness, neverthe-
less have made measurable progress in past generations, it
is due, aside from the liberality shown by the Storting and
government and other favorable conditions, in no small
NORWAY 465
measure to the impulses received at the International Con-
gresses. But first and last it must be said: "We have
planted and watered but God gave the increase."
Finally, for further information about the development
of Norwegian statistics I would refer to an historical review
of its activities prepared on the occasion of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Bureau as an independent institution
and included in the Communications from the Central
Statistical Bureau, also to an article by Professor Rygg,
the present director of the Bureau, written for the centennial
jubilee of the Norwegian University in 1911, under the title
Statistics and included in the memorial publication of the
University. The first-mentioned account was also largely
prepared by Professor Rygg and furnishes an excellent sur-
vey of the development of the administrative statistics, while
the second article, besides making interesting contributions
in the respect just mentioned, is principally concerned with
the scientific side of the Norwegian statistics and its older
and new representatives. Both articles are profitable read-
ing and have in part been utilized for the purposes of the
present survey. In regard to the status of Norwegian sta-
tistics in earlier years, reference may also be made to dif-
ferent reports made in French which are incorporated in the
summaries of the International Congresses. ^
31
RUSSIA
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE
OFFICIAL RUSSIAN STATISTICS
Bt Dr. a. Kaufmann
FrofessoT of Statistics at Petiogiad
7. History and Organization
The chief characteristic of the Russian administrative
statistics is their extreme diversity which runs parallel with a
difference quite as marked in organization and in results.
To be sure, Russia possesses in name a Central Bureau of
Statistics under the Ministry of the Interior which is sup-
plemented by a Statistical Council (Statistitscheskij Ssow-
jef), but it is only in name a central organ for statistics.
Actually, it is simply a statistical bureau sorting under the
Ministry of the Interior, which, in common with the numer-
ous other statistical offices, is occupied with certain branches
of administrative statistics and which, in regard to the per-
sonnel and material means at its disposal, stands noticeably
below several of them.
The earliest beginnings of administrative statistics in
Russia date from the first years of the nineteenth century.
In 1802 a circular was issued by the first Russian Minister
of the Interior, which obligated the provincial governors to
transmit to the ministry "all the data that once for all are
to be gathered from the provinces in order to supply as
complete and thorough a knowledge of their conditions as
possible. " At the same time there was established a "Board
of Nobles" consisting of ten persons, some of whom were
detailed to "arrange historically the information relating
to the condition of the provinces" and thus provide the
basis for the "general statistics" of Russia, in other words,
statistics in the old sense of the term — a description of the
"status." Of the activity of this statistical organization,
which was such only in name, no traces are left. In 1810 the
470 MEMORIAL VOLUME
newly created Ministry of Police was given charge of the
administration of statistics. A "statistical division" was
established under this ministry and reorganized in 1817. It
consisted of an "institution of the learned," a tabulating,
and a cartographic bureau. The first of these was to work
out matters of organization, extract the statistical contents
from the reports of the governors and approve them, and
to prepare the "statistical surveys," while the bureaus were
charged with the tabulating and cartographic work. Some
oflBcials were appointed to the division to gather locally the
necessary facts for the production of the descriptive ma-
terial. The statistical bureau was reorganized in 1834,
this time as a part of the Ministry of the Interior, and was
made into a council of higher officials of this ministry. "Per-
sons having knowledge of and experience with the inner
administration" were chosen as its correspondents, and it
was made the special task of the division to provide an ex-
tensive description of all the branches subordinate to the
ministry. The statistical office in the Ministry of the In-
terior remained in this form until 1852. From this period
dates a series of "surveys" and "statistical tables," most of
which related to the condition of the municipalities of Russia,
while those appearing in 1852 had reference also to the prov-
inces.
It is not worth while to dwell on the partial transforma-
tion which the statistical office underwent in the years 1852
and 1858. It should, however, be mentioned that the "Sta-
tistical Committee," established in 1852, published the
first "statistical tables of the Russian government in 1856,"
began to arrange "statistical expeditions" to the provinces,
and that in 1858 it became known by its present name, the
Central Statistical Office, which, however, in addition to
the statistical division proper, also contained a division for
"rural affairs." The duty of the former was stated to be
"the collection, critical analysis, and systematic arrangement
and compilation of all of the data useful to the Government
in all the branches of the administration. "
RUSSIA 471
Thus the office was to provide not only the Ministry of
the Interior but all other administrative departments with
the necessary data and to publish them. It will be ob-
served that at this stage of development the scientific sta-
tistical task of the central office remained in the background.
Indeed it is still nothing more than a kind of bureau of in-
formation for the different branches of the administration.
In 1861 the "division for rural affairs" was made a sepa-
rate ministerial department, whereby the statistical division
attained an independent position. In 1863 and 1875 it was
given the form which in its essentials has been maintained
until the present time, is patterned after the model evolved
by Quetelet, sanctioned by the Statistical Congress, and
places the scientific statistical tasks in the foreground, in
conformity with the conception of modern statistics. Since
that time the Statistical Council has continued to exist as
the chief advisory authority. According to the wording of
the law, the jurisdiction of the Council is very extensive.
It is its duty to render definite opinions about the organ-
ization for enumerations of the population and other
undertakings exceeding the authority of the individual
administrative offices, and in regard to the schedules for
administrative statistics; to provide for the uniform compil-
ation of the statistical data collected by the statistical offices
of the different admioistrative departments; to give advice
in regard to the organization of the special and provincial
offices; to care for the training of administrative statisti-
cians; and to adjust the relations of the statistical officers
of the local governments to the organs of the general ad-
ministration.
The law governing the Council contains a clause, however,
which nulMes its apparently wide jurisdiction: it gives
advice ex officio only, in regard to those questions which
directly interest the Ministry of the Interior; and in all
other cases only when asked for it by the respective minis-
tries. But, as a matter of fact, the latter hardly ever hap-
pens, and the advisory activity of the Council therefore
472 MEMORUL VOLUME
becomes restricted to the statistics of the branches of the
Department of the Interior. The composition of the Coun-
cil leaves much to be desired. The majority of its members
are higher officials who have little interest in statistics as
such. The administrative statistics are represented by the
director and one of the assistants (editors) of the Central
Statistical Office; the science of statistics, by the respective
member of the Academy of Sciences, the professor of sta-
tistics in the University of Petrograd and the chairman of the
statistical section of the Geographical Society.
On the whole, the Council may be said to lead a practically
fictitious existence. In the course of the fourteen years
from 1895 to 1908 it did not meet more than ten or eleven
times and then, as a rule, only to discuss plans for the enu-
meration of the urban population. The plan for the great
population enimaeration of 1897 it was called upon to ap-
prove only in its general features, the details being entrusted
to a special central commission. It is scarcely an exaggera-
tion to say that the total activity of the Council should be
placed at zero. The reason for such unfruitfulness is found
in the defects of the law and in the endeavor of the individual
departments to assert their independence in questions of
practical statistics, — an endeavor that is not foreign to the
Central Statistical Office of the Ministry of the Interior,
which, according to the wording of the law, is in duty bound
to follow the directions of the Council.
In conformity with the law of 1863, the Central Statistical
Office is charged with the examination and compilation of
the material provided by the local authorities (to be men-
tioned later on). It shall also compile the data transmitted
by other offices and give them the necessary statistical form.
Finally, it is to undertake and complete all manner of sta-
tistical work with which it may be charged by the Minister
of the Interior, according to the resolutions of the Statistical
Council; and this is the clause of the law out of which
the real statistical activity of the central bureau has
developed.
RUSSIA 473
At the head of the bureau is a director with the rank
of a ministerial director. The number of scientific assistants
(editors), originally eight, was increased considerably during
the census period, 1895 to 1905, but in later years has been
reduced to ten.
The oflBce furthermore has a clerical force occupied with
tabulating and administrative duties and commands a fund,
fixed by appropriation, to bear the cost of its statistical
undertakings. The pecuniary allowance to the Central
Office is, however, very meager. Even today it receives
all told the insignificant sum of only 57,000 roubles, while,
for instance, the appropriation of the German Imperial
Statistical Office amounts to 2,200,000 marks and that of the
Prussian Bureau to 650,000 marks. In contrast, also, the
Biu"eau of the Revenue Department of Russia, which has to
do with a single branch of administrative statistics, relatively
of secondary importance, enjoys an appropriation of more
than 100,000 roubles. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at
that the office in the Ministry of the Interior, which was
planned as a statistical central authority, and is so called,
should be obliged gradually to limit its regular activity to a
few branches of statistics. More than once the material
collected has remained untouched for a long time because of
lack of money. Thus the office could not continue the study
of landed property, begun in 1905, until a year later, when
political conditions moved the ministerial council to ap-
propriate the necessary sum of 10,000 roubles from an extra
fund at its disposal. The material gathered in 1910 in re-
gard to wages in agriculture lay untouched for almost two
years, and not until 1912, after the Duma had been especially
petitioned for the necessary money, could it be compiled.
The publication of the works of the office is all too frequently
subject to unconscionable delays. For instance, the statistics
of the natural movement of population for 1873 did not ap-
pear until the year 1882, and even in the summer of 1914,
the last issue at hand was for the year 1907. The publica-
474 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tion of the study of landed property of 1887 was not begun
until 1892 and appeared in serial form as late as in 1900.
In far worse condition is the organization of the local
offices. In Russia there exists in reality only a mediating
and no observing statistical authority. The provincial
statistical offices, established in 1834 and reorganized in
1860, function in the former capacity. According to the
Russian adminstrative terminology they are known as
"government" offices, and by the law of 1860 constitute a
species of administrative boards, under the chairmanship
of the governor with the leading provincial representatives
as regular members, and having the right to elect persons who
on account of their knowledge or experience concerning the
objects of the local statistics may prove serviceable as actual,
or in certain cases, as honorary members. Each office has at
its disposal the very insufficient sum of 1,500 to 2,000 roubles,
out of which must be paid the salary of the only working
force of the office, its secretary. The secretaries are ap-
pointed by the governors, and, as a rule, are ordinary of-
ficials in the provincial administration of whose competence
in statistical matters there is no guarantee, and who generally
combine their statistical functions with purely administrative
ones, and must do so in view of their miserable salary (1,750
roubles). According to the spirit of the law, the provincial
offices thus organized are conceived of as "administrative
and learned societies"; in fact, their existence as boards
is purely fictitious, and the entire provincial office is per-
sonified by the statistically unequipped secretary. It is not
to be wondered at that the provincial offices, or more cor-
rectly their secretaries, to cite once more official evidence,
"are not in a position to undertake serious tasks of any kind;
their entire activity is, as a rule, limited to the compilation
of the statistical tables as appendices to the accounts of the
governors. " It is, therefore, " not possible for them to treat
material at their disposal critically, and they are generally
restricted to the obligatory compilations and groupings."
Occasionally the provincial offices, or rather their secretaries,
RUSSIA 475
are called in by the Central Office to participate in the in-
vestigations undertaken by it, and they then play the rdle
of a supervisory and formally controlling authority, for
which they have very little aptitude. As a characteristic
instance may be mentioned the crop statistics. Originally
the schedules filled out (see below) were collected by the
provincial offices, formally supervised by them and trans-
mitted to the Central Office; but they proved so useless
for this task that the Central Office after 1894 released them
from all participation in the crop investigations, and since
that time the schedules have been transmitted to it directly
from the inferior administrative boards.
The lower mediums for collecting information are in the
worst condition. The Russian administrative statistics do
not command any. According to the striking saying of a
Russian expert (Kotelnikow), the statistical equipment may
be compared to an army which has at its disposal a general
staff, something akin to officers in the shape of provincial
boards, but no soldiers. The functions of the lower mediums
of investigation are discharged chiefly by the clergy, the
district police, and last but not least by the district com-
munity administration (fVohstnoje Prawlenie). The clergy
furnish the facts in regard to the natural movement of popu-
lation. It is the duty of the district police to provide all
the data which are to be incorporated in the tables of the
governors' reports. The district community administra-
tions are maids of all work. It is their business to answer all
kinds of statistical and non-statistical inquiries and, as we
shall see later, especially those of the Central Statistical
Office, and they are in part individual observing organs and
in part a medium for the distribution and collection of sched-
iiles to be filled out concerning the rural population. "In
regard to the methods to be observed in collecting statistical
data, neither the law" — according to official evidence — "nor
instructions of any kind provide any guidance whatsoever,
and for this reason the data cannot be considered to be
worthy of serious treatment." Relative particularly to
476 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the district community administrations, the same official
evidence states that "in a few instances where the question
is of facts and where very simple interrogatories are made,
they are capable of furnishing satisfactory statements. The
impossibility of exercising any control by or of giving any
instruction through the higher authorities and the over-
burdening of the lower boards by current administrative
duties in most cases exclude the possibility of obtaining
complete and trustworthy data through them. "
After all that has been said, the general verdict in regard
to the Russian administrative statistics as a whole must
be a completely unfavorable one. A thorough reform in
organization has become a crying necessity, and had not the
World War broken out it would perhaps already have been
realized. Half a century ago the organization had taken
a great step in advance, — a progress so great that we have
not caught up with it until this very day. For notwith-
standing all its defects, the reorganization of 1863 brought
about something akin to the scheme evolved by the best
European practice and sanctioned by the Statistical Con-
gress. The newly created central boards were for the first
time given statistical aims, and it is very much to be doubted
if, under the general existing Russian conditions, it would
have been possible to create an organization corresponding
more nearly to our present-day conception. Yet every or-
ganization is but a form which may be given very different
contents according to circumstances. In this respect the
first two decades were far better than the following two.
The reorganization of the Russian administrative statis-
tics was planned and carried out by a very eminent per-
sonality, the renowned geographer and statistician, P. Sseme-
now. He became the first director of the Central Office
and was at the same time chairman of the Statistical Council.
He imbued the newly created organization with a scientific
statistical spirit. He brought to the task as secretaries or
vice presidents of the provincial offices, which today have
sunk so low, a number of notable personalities (Ssablin,
RUSSIA 477
Lasarewski, Stscherbina, Pokrowski, Gaziski, Anutschin,
Jegunow, Jahnson, and others), each of whom has played a
r6le in the history of the development of Russian statistics.
These men saw in him, according to the testimony of the
only one still surviving (Pokrowski), "an energetic and ex-
perienced leader who first of all was concerned about scientific
and conscientious endeavor in the collection and preparation
of the material. " He knew how to unite energy and firmness
in leadership with an appreciation both of individual in-
itiative and independence in the assistants appointed for the
provinces. It suffices to call attention to one fact which
under Russian political conditions is especially noteworthy
and up to the present time without a counterpart: In the
year 1870 he called a meeting of the provincial secretaries
at which the proposition for the census of population, the
reorganization of the local statistical boards, and a number of
other basic questions of Russian administrative statistics
were to be discussed. As chief of the Central Office, Sseme-
now knew how to draw to himself a number of eminent men
as assistants, and it even appears that in filling the position
of editors he followed the principle of selection. He was
not only the chief but at the same time also the first and most
gifted scientific worker of the Central Office. In the case
of large statistical investigations made during his time, he
would personally execute the experimental work used as a
basis for the final methods of treatment. And when the
inquiries lay close to his scientific and social interests, he
would in person finish the scientific treatment of the material
which had been prepared according to his plans. Thus the
entire text of the volumes constituting the studies of landed
property in 1877, which in scientific statistical respects stand
alone, is his. This achievement in itself would be enough
to give the author a name in the history of Russian statistics.
To Ssemenow are also due the methodological bases of both
branches of the administrative statistics upon which the
activity of the Central Office centered in the following dec-
ades— ^the statistics of the natural movement of population
478 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and the crop statistics. In regard to the latter the large
plans formulated by Ssemenow have as yet not been fully
realized.
Still another characteristic trait of the activity of the
Central Office which prevailed until about the middle of the
nineties, must be noticed, namely, the extraordinary di-
versity of the subjects which were treated statistically. The
reason for this is perhaps, in part, the scientific many-sided-
ness of Ssemenow and in part, the very varied scientific
qualifications of his assistants, among whom were to be
foimd monetary specialists (H. Kauffmann), actuaries (Oc-
hotschinski), and others. Perhaps more important was the
circumstance that the late extensive development of special
offices had scarcely begun and that, therefore, the statistical
office in the Ministry of the Interior was obliged actually to
function as a central authority, to assume responsibility,
and to imdertake the most varied investigations which were
of interest to the government. However this may be, the
variety of the objects with which the Central Office had to
concern itself is a noteworthy fact. Aside from the two
fields to which at that time chief attention was directed —
population statistics and agrarian statistics — ^its publica-
tions covered schools, prostitution, railways, monasteries,
river navigation, foreign commerce, manufacture, religious
statistics, banking and money, the mathematical basis of
insurance, post and telegraphic statistics, criminal statistics,
etc.
In the middle of the eighties Ssemenow was obliged to
resign the leadership of the Central Office on account of
differences of opinion with the Minister of the Interior,
Count D. A. Tolstoj, and only retained the chairmanship of
the Statistical Council which had been relegated to a purely
nominal existence. He hoped to see as his successor a
man of scientific attainment and first recommended the
ethnologist, L. N. Majkow, who later became the vice
president of the Academy of Sciences, and then Professor
J. E. Jahnson, one of the most prominent representatives
RUSSIA 479
of the science of statistics in Russia. But the minister
decided otherwise and chose as Ssemenow's successor a
governor, N. A. Trojnitzki, a man who until the day of his
appointment had been a stranger to statistics. He re-
mained in office almost twenty years and was thereafter,
until his death, President of the Statistical Council. This
was a period of stagnation from which his three successors
in office were not able to extricate themselves. These three
successors were General Solotarew, formerly professor of
military statistics at the Academy of War, and Messrs.
Georgiewski and Bjelawski, both professors of political
economy.
On the other hand, it was noteworthy of this period in the
development of the statistics of the Central Office, that its
activities gradually became circumscribed. In the diflferent
departments of administration special statistical divisions
were established and the Central Office, according to official
evidence, "no longer utilized its exceedingly limited means
and forces for the observation of matters that came within
the authority of the individual special officer." The activity
of the Central Office was therefore concentrated on the fields
which "from the nature of the case had attracted its special
attention from the beginning: the statistics of population
and agriculture." To them were added the compilation of
a census of horses, statistics of fires, and the publication of
statistical year books.
77. The Work and Publications of the Central Statistical
Office
It was originally intended that the principal publications
of the Central Office should form first one, then two con-
tinued series. From 1866 to 1887, one series bore the general
title "Statistical Journal of the Russian Empire"; later
two series appeared, one (since 1887) bearing the general
title "Statistics of the Russian Empire," the other (since
1888) that of "Journal of the Central Statistical Office."
But by no means all the publications of the Central Office
480 MEMORIAL VOLUME
were incorporated in these series; and it is not quite evident
to one outside the office what principle of selection was fol-
lowed. Thus, for instance, one of the publications on agra-
rian statistics appeared in the series of the Journal, while
others were not incorporated in it. Some of the year books
as well were incorporated in this series, while the others were
published independently.
We shall dwell first on the statistical undertakings and
publications of the Central Office which bear the character
of separate or periodically recurrent works, and then consider
those having the stamp of continued statistics. In the first
category belongs the first and until today only general enu-
meration of population, dating from 1897. Before that
year Russia had no scientific statistical census of population.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century the registration
of the population, the so-called "revisions," was used as a
basis. These "enumerations," which formerly obtained in
other countries, were decidedly of a fiscal-political character,
being marked by all the defects common to their kind, and
they cannot be brought into comparison with a regular
census, moreover, for the reason that they included only
the classes liable to a head tax and to military service —
peasants and common citizens, and not the so-called "priv-
ileged classes." According to an ordinance of 1843, the
revisions in question should occur once in fifteen years, but
this rule was not observed. The ninth revision (of 1850)
followed seventeen years after the eighth; the tenth followed
the ninth after an interval of eight years and was the last of
its kind. From 1858 to 1897 the Russian statistics were
obliged to fall back upon other and, on the whole, even less
trustworthy substitutes. Among these are to be mentioned
in the first place the so-called "family registers" which were
kept up for the purpose of recording the persons liable to
nailitary service, and for which the lists of the tenth revision
were used as a basis, the necessary additions and subtractions
being entered currently. Moreover, "administrative and
police estimates of population were made through the aid of
RUSSIA 481
local statistical oflSces, the police, and %he district community
administrations. " Information obtained in this manner was
"compared with the data in the Central Office and published
after having been carefully tested." It is easy to see that
population statistics brought together in this fashion had
little claim to statistical validity. The preface to the Year
Book for 1882 says: "The Central Office had abundant
opportunil^ to convince itself of the untrustworthiness
of the current population figures; it has long since felt sure
that one should use them only in anticipation of a census,
and that without it no partial test even under the most favor-
able circumstances will yield thoroughly satisfactory re-
sults." Accordingly in the sixties, preparations and plans
were made by Ssemenow, or on his initiative, for a regular
enumeration of population. In 1870 a preliminary plan
was discussed by a gathering of provincial statisticians.
In 1874 Ssemenow took advantage of the establishment of
a commission charged with formulating the registration
methods relative to persons liable to military service and
submitted to it a plan for a census. This commission did
not adopt the scheme, but carried out one of the most es-
sential preliminary efforts for promoting a census, namely
that of making a register of all the habitations in the country.
This plan was actually effected during the years 1876 and
1877 and proved one of the most valuable of the older sources
of the Russian population statistics. It is known as " Com-
munity Districts and the More Important Settlements of
European Russia," 1880 to 1886.
In 1882 the plan for the population enumeration was
submitted to the Statistical Council; but again there was
a delay. In 1894 the Council took it up again, and in
1895 the proposition for the "First General Census of the
Population" finally became a law. The 28th of January
(Feb. 9), 1897, was fixed as the date of the enumeration,
and an appropriation of 3,900,000 roubles was made to
cover the cost of the preparation and canvass. The pro-
gram for the enumeration was on the whole like that usu-
32
482 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ally followed in European censuses. It had the advantage
that, in addition to the principal calling of the person
enumerated, any subsidiary occupation was noted, which was
quite essential in view of the faint industrial distinctions
made in Russia. Among the drawbacks may be mentioned
partly those connected with the legal class distinctions
still observed in Russia, and partly the practical objects
aimed at in connection with standing questions, such as
relationship to social classes and liability to military serv-
ice. It was necessary to reckon with the low degree of
education among the Russian agricultural population and to
prescribe their oral interrogations through the enumerators.
For the urban population and the domains of the nobility,
written statements were unfortunately required. A so-
called "Chief Commission of Population Enumeration"
was at the head of the whole organization of the census;
and although its chairman was an expert of the standing of
Ssemenow (the nominal president was the Minister of the
Interior), the preponderant majority consisted of officials
from the different departments. The local organization of
the census suffered even to a greater extent from bureau-
cracy. The provincial and district organizations consisted
siinply of boards of officials. The functions of the superin-
tendents of the enumeration districts were ex qffido laid upon
the rural officials known as semskije Natschalniki. Another
great difficulty was the lack of properly qualffied persons as
enumerators. It was necessary to employ men possessing
a very low degree of education and intelligence. Originally
it was intended that the Chief Census Commission should
not only carry out the enumeration but direct the tabulation.
In May of 1898, however, the Commission was dissolved, the
preparation of the material was turned over to the Central
Statistical Office, and for this purpose the number of assist-
ants (editors) had been doubled. At the outset the Central
Office confined itself to a plan calling for twenty tables
which had been perfected by the Chief Census Commission.
But it was soon found to be too complicated and impracti-
RUSSIA 483
cable considering the forces and means at hand and was
therefore much simplified. Nevertheless the original ap-
propriation of 3,900,000 roubles did not suffice, and it was
necessary to supplement it by a guarantee of 1,300,000
roubles. The total cost of making the enumeration and
compiling the results was still only 5,200,000 roubles, equal
to 4.2 copecks per capita of the population enumerated,
while for instance at tie "Union Census of 1900" the enu-
meration of the population alone cost 13.5 copecks per capita.
Much of the work done at this time has been subject to
criticism. The lack of properly worked-out plans and in
general of leadership has been emphasized, in consequence of
which especially the statistics of occupation sufiPered from
defects. The final results of the census were first published
in separate bulletins for each of the provinces and for four
large cities. The first twenty bulletins appeared according
to the original plan, those following, according to the abbre-
viated plan. The general results of the enumeration ap-
peared in two volumes in 1905 containing all the data for the
provinces and the large cities, some tables for the larger
industrial regions, and a classification of occupations and
age in totals for the whole country. Aside from this, some
special tabulations were made showing the confessional
divisions of the population, according to occupation and age
for the different districts; statistics of laborers as distinct
from servants classified by occupation and place of birth;
statistics of the blind; and separate statistics of the old
form orthodox believers and sects according to religious
communities and sex.
The law governing the population census of 1895 related
solely to the enumeration of 1897 and did not fix any period
for following enumerations. Indeed, as yet no second enu-
meration has been made. Already seventeen years have
passed since the first, and its data, especially in view of
the rapid economic development of Russia, are completely
antiquated. And in regard to mere numbers of population
we once more must take refuge in estimates which, as is suf-
484 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ficiently well known, are quite unreliable. From all sides,
in scientific as well as in commercial circles, is voiced the
demand for a new enumeration. But only comparatively
recently, so far as I know first in 1913, has the Central Sta-
tistical Office undertaken to prepare plans for a second gen-
eral census of population. Of the first steps taken, little
or nothing has been told the public. In the course of the
winter of 1913-14, a draft of the new population census law
was submitted to the Duma accompanied by a request for
the necessary appropriation. In the beginning of 1914 a
commission was established under the direction of the present
president of the Statistical Council, Privy Councillor Pro-
fessor Georgiewski, to which also some representatives of
statistical science were added. The commission has planned
much more elaborate schedules and corresponding instruc-
tions for carrying them out than those obtaining in 1897.
It also appears that the leading persons in the Central Sta-
tistical Office are inclined to meet the demands formulated
by experts which were very definitely set forth at the con-
vention of statisticians in 1910 and which will give the entire
organization less of a bureaucratic character by securing it
scientffic aid and cooperation throughout wider social circles.
However, the European war has now intervened and the
enumeration which was fixed for December, 1915, has been
postponed for the present.
Of statistical undertakings and publications in the field
of agricultural and rural economy, the three studies of landed
property of 1877, 1887, and 1905 are first to be mentioned.
The earliest one, which was far above the level of the Russian
statistics of that time and until the present day without a
counterpart, was planned and carried out by Ssemenow. We
mentioned above the lists prepared in the second half of the
seventies of habitations which were to be classffied according
to land-owning units. Ssemenow, who had been one of the
participants in the agrarian reform of 1861 and always en-
tertained a lively interest in questions of landed property,
especially that of the peasants, now succeeded, as the official
RUSSIA 485
story of the Central Office tells it, "in utilizing this oppor-
tunity to make an investigation of the properties themselves
in order to find a means of controlling the data in regard to
habitations and also to obtain a basis for the statistics of
landed property. " The investigation took place in the year
1877 and its results were published in 1880-1886 in eight
volumes, under the title "Statistics of Landed Property."
For each community or private property a special schedule
was used. It was filled out, so far as the peasant communi-
ties were concerned, by the district conamunity administra-
tions and by the proprietors for the private properties. The
district police were put in charge of the distribution, col-
lection and oversight of the schedules, while the material
obtained was submitted to the scrutiny of the provincial
statistical offices and thereupon, at the end of 1877, trans-
mitted to the Central Statistical Office. It was furthermore
ordered that from each province the material relating to a
single district should be transmitted, and when this ex-
perimental material had been tested the provincial officers
were to be given further instructions in regard to the con-
tinuation and control of the investigation; and when nec-
essary, additions to the material collected were to be in-
sisted upon. The preparation of the material followed both
administrative and geographic lines. The administrative
district was taken as a unit, but within every province groups
of districts of similar natural and economic conditions were
formed, and for each of these totals and averages were calcu-
lated which enabled the formation of greater economic and
geographic fields to be dealt with in corresponding numbers.
Special tables were prepared for private and for peasant
property. First the number of property units and the area
of usable land and of cultivated land are given; secondly, a
grouping of the private properties for the total area, and
of the peasant community property according to the number
of participating individuals, based on calculations of the
number of males derived from the tenth "revision." In
the same publication special tables show the number of
486 MEMORIAL VOLUME
different categories of habitations and of buildings, the latter
being classified according to the building material and roof-
ing. Unfortunately, I cannot dwell on Ssemenow's text
accompanying the different parts of the publication which
characterizes the conditions of landed property in the dif-
ferent communities.
The second study of landed property followed in 1887
under Ssemenow's successor, Trojnitzki. It was combined
with an investigation of the utilization of the area — a sta-
tistical operation which will be referred to below in connec-
tion with crop statistics. This amalgamation of two dif-
ferent operations resulted to the injury of both on account
of the inferior order of the technique and the lack of aptitude
of the persons employed. The respective schedules were
filled out on the one hand by the owners of private property
and on the other by the district community administration.
The first general test of the material by the district police
was omitted, but so much greater emphasis was placed upon
the test by the provincial statistical officers. The schedules
filled out by the owners of private property arrived very
slowly; the whole material was foimd to be so defective that
for four provinces it could not be utilized at all, and the rest
had to be supplemented and corrected through a new in-
quiry. The publication was not finished until 1900. It
appeared under the general title " Chief Results of the Sta-
tistics of Landed Property According to the Investigation
of 1887, " in separate bulletins for each province. The omis-
sion of summary tables made the utilization of the publica-
tion for any purpose whatsoever particularly difficult.
The third investigation, undertaken in 1905, was clearly
instigated by the agrarian movement which had continued
unabated since 1902. The requisite data were sought by the
provincial statistical offices, but strange to tell, no instruc-
tions for their collection were issued. "In conformity with
the variety of conditions in the single provinces," says the
preface to the publications in question, "and in order not
to bind the governors by designating any definite method
RUSSIA 487
of procedure, no method was prescribed." It was only rec-
ommended that the governors should secure the assistance
of the financial administration of the provinces and make
tests by means of the tax records. The material obtained
from the provinces remained untouched until the middle of
1906; but it was then disposed of with unusual rapidity, so
that in 1907 the publications of the results were already
completed. They formed fifty numbers for the different
provinces and a summary for the whole of European Russia
under the title "Statistics of Landed Property in 1905."
As the piu-pose of the publication was not only to exhibit the
distribution of landed property at the moment, but also to
show the changes that had taken place since 1877, the tabula-
tion followed in general the plan of the first inquiry with the
one striking difference, that the groupings of the rural popu-
lation according to peasant property was carried out not
according to the participating individuals but according
to average numbers of such calculated for each holding.
This was due to the still existing predilection in Russian
governmental circles for the classification of property by
holdings, but critically considered it is nevertheless a de-
fective designation on account of the existing property
conditions in Russia.
For the rest, the judgment of the scientific critics (v.
Dehn, Skworzow, Ssirinow, and others) agreed in regard to
the comparative value of the three principal Russian in-
vestigations of landed property. They lacked comparability,
first, because of the indefinite methods of investigation
followed in the different provinces in 1905, and secondly, be-
cause of the variety of principles in classifications adopted
in 1877 and 1905. Furthermore, the difference in treatment
makes it impossible to determine in each individual case
whether it is included in the general figures or left out. The
unanimous verdict of scientific criticism is most favorable to
the investigation of 1877 which "had the statistical investi-
gation of landed property as its only aim and was carried
out with great thoroughness according to a well-conceived
488 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and broad plan. Therefore, the investigation of 1877-1878
provides a very complete picture of landed property at the
end of the seventies.*' The investigation of 1877 "was, on
the other hand, carried on according to a very superficial and
poorly thought out program, while the preparation of the
material was careless and suffers from great defects. " The
investigation of 1905 stands closer to the one of 1877 in regard
to plan, but the results were to a considerable extent invali-
dated by the peculiar liberty in methods of procedure which
was permitted the governors of the different provinces.
To the same category of the works of the Central Sta-
tistical Office belongs also the enumeration of horses. The
official statistics of live stock in Russia are of a very low
order. In reality, they are based solely upon the reports of
the governors which have a very slight claim to trustworthi-
ness as statistics. The numbers thus obtained were compiled
from time to time by the central office and given out in its
different publications. Nevertheless, the official history of
the central office states that "the condition of live stock in
Russia cannot be determined as for this purpose a special
eniuneration is necessary which would require large ex-
penditures. " As the central office does not dispose over the
necessary means, it resolved in 1900 to secure the numbers
of domestic animals, but in a likewise very incomplete man-
ner, namely, by aid of the district police and the district
community administrations. The numbers derived from
this source are published as for the provinces in the current
reviews of the crops. A presentation according to districts
.was made only once, namely, in 1900, and the results pub-
lished in the "Journal." A more exact registration of the
stock of horses was demanded on behalf of the army. Ex-
perimental queries of this kind by the central office were pub-
lished already in 1875 and 1876 and the experience thus
gained formed the basis of the first "regulations for enu-
merating the stock of horses. " An enumeration carried on
in conformity with these regulations in 1876 in 33 provinces
and undertaken with a view to the approaching war with
RUSSIA 489
Turkey, yielded incomplete results. Therefore in 1882 new
regulations were prepared and in the same year a new enu-
meration of horses was made in 58 provinces, that is to
say, for almost the whole of European Russia. For a long
time it was the only one so extensive. As a rule, periods of
two to three years elapsed between investigations, all of
which related only to a number of provinces, except the
one of 1912 which covered almost the whole of European as
well as of Asiatic Russia.
The procedure in enumerating horses includes two steps.
First, complete lists of horses, classified according to sex
and age, are obtained from the supervisors of the military
horse districts. Then it is ascertained through officers, with
the assistance of district supervisors, how many of them are
of work age and generally serviceable. The results of these
inquiries are very reliable as may be seen from the minimal
differences between the compilations made by Professor
Fortunatow and the numbers obtained through the zemstvo
statistics. The compilation of the figures is made in the
Central Statistical Office according to a plan originating in
the time of Ssemenow, partly for the provinces and partly
for districts. The tables contain totals with a classification
of horses by sex, age and measure, and of the owners ac-
cording to their urban or rural place of residence and class
of society. The owners are also shown in relation to the
total number of horses as well as the number of those of
proper work age. Taken altogether, these statistics of both
classes constitute a most valuable material for the purpose
of judging the evolution of the general wealth of the popu-
lation and the differences it exhibits. But in the latter
respect the value is diminished by the circumstance that the
enumeration of horses as a rule only relates to a part of the
provinces.
Brief mention must be made of the lists of all habitations
in the different provinces which were published between 1861
and 1888. The lists contained for each dwelling the essential
data of topographic and demographic character and were
490 MEMORIAL VOLUME
for the greater part accompanied by statistical geographic
descriptions of the respective provraces and by maps. At
the time these lists, and especially the iatroductory descrip-
tions, constituted one of the most important statistical-
geographic sources of knowledge for many, if not for all,
of the provinces, and it is to be deplored that no work of
the same kind has been undertaken since. A somewhat
similar aim was followed in a publication dating from the
years 1880-1886, and comprised in eight volumes which
bear the title " Community Districts and the Most Important
Settlements of European Russia." It contains the results
of the above-mentioned investigation of 1877 planned as a
preparatory work to a general census. It gives for each
commimity district the number of rural villages and dwellings,
the area of the peasant lands and property of other cate-
gories, and the population; furthermore, a list of the most
important habitations for each district with notations of a
geographic and demographic character, and a list of the
community and police districts. Analogous publications
appeared in 1890-1892 imder the title "Population Districts
and Gminen (Polish Communities)," and in 1894 under the
title "The Population of the Village Comimunities and the
Communal Lands according to the Investigation of 1893."
For the last mentioned of these publications the data were
obtained from the supervisors of the community districts,
who for that pm-pose had to visit all the parishes within their
districts. Finally, in 1905, the work was published under
the title "Settlements with More than Five Hundred In-
habitants, " and is an extract of the results of the population
enumeration of 1897, to some extent intended to supplement
the lack of a complete accoimt of the settlements.
A number of the publications of the Central Statistical
Office relate to the cities and their population. As noted at
the outset, the first of their kind date from the first half of
the nineteenth centiu-y. Without dwelling on the publica-
tions of that period, I wish to mention the extensive work in
seven volumes known as "The Urban Settlements of Russia,"
RUSSIA 491
prepared in the Ministry of the Interior for the years
1860-1863, and in part of a statistical nature. Later publi-
cations in regard to the condition of the cities date from the
years 1904 and 1910. According to the official history of the
central office, the data in question were compiled "without
expensive special investigations through the means and
forces at the disposal of the office itself in conjunction with
the provincial offices, and so far as the larger cities were
concerned, with the cooperation of the city administration. "
These investigations relate throughout to municipal ad-
ministrations and other centers of more than 10,000 in-
habitants, 'and although cast into tabular form are in the
nature of descriptions with special reference to benevolent
provisions and the conditions of living of the urban popula-
tion. Strange to say, in the publication of 1904 there are
found 36 cities for which the central office did not obtain
the necessary data, including the capital, Petrograd. In
the investigation of 1910 this city is represented, to be sure,
but most of the questions relating to it remained unanswered.
We turn next to the publications of current statistics.
First are to be mentioned the statistics of the natural move-
ment of population. As is well known, births, deaths and
marriages in Russia are registered by the clergy at the time
of the consummation of the corresponding ritual acts. The
registration is made in chm-ch books according to a form
fixed in 1838 and in part earlier. I shall not dwell on the
well-known defects which are inseparable from the registra-
tion by the clergy, but emphasize that only in the large
places and in a few provinces do the clergy, in addition to
the matters entered in the church books, fill out statistical
cards to be transmitted to the provincial or municipal sta-
tistical offices for compilation. As a rule, the preparation
of the material is completely decentralized, for every priest
makes the necessary extracts from his church books accord-
ing to the prescribed tabular formula and only these extracts
are transmitted for collective treatment to the provincial
offices and then to the central office. In consequence of
492 MEMORIAL VOLUME
this procedure, the contents of the notations and likewise
of the publication ensuing, which appears in annuals under
the title "Movement of the Population," are very scanty.
Among the entries made, that pertaining to the religious
confession is given first place, then the facts relating to the
movement of population by months, then by sex and age.
The births are classified as legitimate and illegitimate. Sep-
arate statements are prepared for the rural inhabitants, the
larger cities and other cities. Facts of occupation, condi-
tions of dwelling, and causes of death are not registered and
therefore do not appear in the resulting publications. These
questions have a place in the schedules relating to a few of
the large municipalities and are dealt with in local publica-
tions.
Another branch of statistics receiving current attention
but naturally necessitating a much more complicated system,
and in which a certain progress has been made in contrast to
most other classes of statistics in the central oflSce, are the
crop statistics. As we shall see later on, crop statistics
are collected not only by the central oflSce in the Ministry
of the Interior, but also in the Ministry of Agriculture and
partly in the Ministry of Finance. Naturally, they should
sort under the Ministry of Agriculture. The reason why
the Central Statistical Office in the Ministry of the Interior
is concerned with them is that it has to do with all matters
pertaining to the conservation of grain, of great importance
in Russia on account of the frequent failure of the crops, and
it is therefore in a practical sense more interested than any
other office in timely reports concerning crop prospects and
the harvest. Until the beginning of the sixties the ministry
depended upon reports received from the lower administra-
tive and police offices and which lacked almost all reliability.
As soon as the Central Statistical Office had been given its
present form (1864 and 1865) it attempted to present statis-
tically the facts in regard to seeding and harvest for the
quinquennial period 1860-1864, but the results were so un-
satisfactory that they could not be published. In the sue-,
RUSSIA 493
ceeding years, 1866-1868, a special investigation of the
then existing administrative methods of reporting the crops
was made by Ssemenow, and, as might be expected, it showed
their complete unfitness. No improvement was made;
indeed only partial improvements occurred until 1880. The
great famine of that year moved the administration to more
earnest measures for the production of useful crop sta-
tistics. A conference was held which adopted the prin-
ciple of organization formulated by Ssemenow as early as
1866. It called for an annual collection of reports in regard
to the results of the harvest from a certain number of farms
evenly distributed over the territory of each district, where-
upon the average figures obtained were multiplied by the
number of the area units of the corresponding kinds of grains
cultivated. Already in the fall of the same year six schedules
were sent to each district, of which three were filled out by
the district administration accompanied by statements of
opinion from peasants, and three by proprietors and owners
of private property. In addition, "control schedules" were
sent to be filled out by experienced cultivators. The method
of reporting which thus was decided upon in 1880 is still in
force, but the number of the schedules distributed was
doubled already in the following year. Since that time
twelve schedules are filled out for each community district,
six by private and six by peasant cultivators, and for the last
mentioned it is prescribed that two shall belong to the more
well-to-do, two to the average class, and two to the poor.
Since 1893 special schedules are distributed in regard to
winter grains and hay and for the later grains, so that the
central office is enabled to publish the chief results earlier
so far as hay and winter grains are concerned. Until 1894
the schedules filled out were sent to the provincial statistical
offices for examination and transmittal to the central office.
The only result obtained was that the provincial offices de-
layed the entire operation and thereafter the schedules were
sent directly to the central office by the community district ad-
ministrations. The statistics in question have been published
494 MEMORIAL VOLUME
annually (since 1883 under the title "Harvest of the Year,'*
etc.) and in sections, one for hay and winter grains and the
second for summer grains and other crops. The totals for
the different provinces are compared with those of the pre-
ceding year and with the average for the last five years ; the
average is also shown for the respective year for each dis-
trict. Relative to each kind of grain is shown the total
quantity seeded and harvested, the seeding and harvest
of the areal units, the relation between harvest and seeding,
the net amount harvested in total numbers and in averages
per capita for the total population.
The final results of the crop statistics of the central oflSce
appear quite punctually, but first in the year following the
harvest. For practical purposes, however, it is necessary to
know the results of harvests as early as possible and to have
information in regard to the prospects. Accordingly the
preliminary compilation of the total results of the harvest
is made in October for winter grains and in November for
summer grains, and published by provinces. Moreover,
a rather complicated system of preliminary reports has been
developed. The most essential part of it is the crop forecast
which has taken place annually since 1904. The method of
investigation followed is in principle the same as that in
regard to harvest results. The notations are indicated by
numbers (from 5 to zero), and in compilation are calculated
in weighted numbers according to fixed coeflficients. Since
1910 the numbers obtained through the immediate investiga-
tion are, moreover, corrected by the results of the previous
year. In the same manner reports are obtained every fall
in regard to the condition of the winter grains; but since 1906
current reports are secured through the district police of the
condition both of winter and summer grains. At the outset
six reports were made, but gradually their number has in-
creased to fourteen a year. They are tabulated as summaries
and appear in the oflScial periodicals, the more important
of them in the form of special pamphlets.
RUSSIA 495
For the purpose of determining the results of the harvest,
for units as well as for the total area, it is necessary to know
the area seeded in each kind of grain. According to Sseme-
now's plan, the distribution of farming land was to be as-
certained every five years in relation to its utilization as well
as in relation to the cultivated area, classified according to
grains and other crops, while in the intervening years the
changes that might take place were to be learned from the
local administrations. Basic investigations of this kind
occurred only twice, namely, in 1881 and 1887. The first
was carried out independently, the other, in connection with
the second investigation of landed property. In both in-
stances the method of procedure was the same as in the
studies of landed property; but the reliability of the results
was much inferior because it was impossible to test in any
way the statements made by persons interested, and because
the utilization of the soil cannot be definitely determined, es-
pecially in places under primitive pastoral cultivation. The
results of the inquiry of 1881 appear as an independent vol-
ume under the title "Distribution of the Area According to
Its Utihzation," while the study of 1887 was combined with
that of landed property.
The basic investigations of 1881 and 1887 have not been
repeated. The Russian official statistics have not further
concerned themselves at all about the distribution of the
cultivated area according to its utilization. In regard to
the seeded areas and their distribution according to crops,
which it is imperative to know in order to calculate the pro-
visions to be made for harvest and grains, the data of the
investigation of 1887 were utilized until 1892. Since that
time the necessary reports are obtained annually from the
district police and the community district administrations.
The first mentioned have to determine the seeded areas
belonging to private cultivators, the second those of the
peasant communities. The community district administra-
tions obtain the required data through the village elder
496 MEMORIAL VOLUME
(starosta) who interrogates the different peasant cultivators
or the village assembly.
Among the publications of the Central Statistical OflSce
which in the latest years have assumed a regular character,
there is finally to be mentioned the statistical year books.
The first of its kind appeared in 1852 and contained "Sta-
tistical Tables for the Year 1840." When the Central
Statistical OflBce was established in its original form it pur-
posed to begin a regular issue of a year book. Accordingly,
in 1860, "Statistical Tables of the Russian Empire for 1858"
were published, but owing to the dearth of sources of sta-
tistics these tables contained nothing but extracts from the
reports of the governors. Subsequently, schedules and in-
structions were sent to the police, at that time the only
medium for investigation, in order to secure a regular supply
of material for future year books. But the required data
either were not obtained or proved for the greater part to be
entirely unusable, so that for the year 1859 the publication
of the tables had to be omitted. Those which finally did
appear in 1863, edited by one of the most competent sta-
tisticians of the time, v. Buschen, related to the year 1860
and were of a wholly different character. They give, partly
according to districts and partly in totals for provinces, only
the most important data and chiefly those which in a measure
were subject to control, covering such subjects as area,
dwellings and population classified by sex, confession, and
legal social class. Each of the five tables is accompanied by
a detailed introduction fairly descriptive of the statistical
and other sources of information and even today has an
historical value.
Soon after its reorganization (1863) the Central Statistical
Office undertook the compilation of a year book having the
character of a statistical reference book, as is customary in
other states, and " which was intended to meet the demands
which reached the office from every side for information in all
fields of statistics." It was published in 1866 and contained
"statements of the area, population and dwellings, of com-
RUSSIA 497
merce and industry, as well as criminal, educational, financial
and military statistics. " The effort was not repeated for ten
years as the central oflfice "realized the insufl&ciency of many
data which in case of a new issue would have to be secured
from the same unsatisfactory sources." In the beginning
of the eighties the Central Statistical OflBce found itself in
position, " as a result of the enrichment of our statistics by
valuable material, to furnish thoroughly reliable and quite
new data for most fields of statistics." Accordingly, in
1884 there was published a year book or reference work for
1882 and thereafter for the years 1883, 1884-5, 1890 and
1896. As a rule, the publication was delayed from one to
three years. The very numerous tables, more than eighty
in all, fall under the following rubrics : Area, landed property
and the utilisation of the soil, the condition of population
and its movement, infectious diseases and medical aid,
criminal statistics, education, military service, crops, live
stock, commerce, industry, revenue, finance, railways,
shipping, post and telegraphs, banks and money, etc.
After 1896 another long pause occurred, but since 1904
the Year Book of Russia, or, as it is now called, the Statistical
Year Book, has been published regularly and quite punctu-
ally. Its contents is of an encyclopedic character. In the
last issues the numerous tables are grouped into divisions of
varied extent, with the following headings: (1) Area and
population, including education and occupation; (2) Move-
ment of population; (3) Medical service and infectious
diseases; (4) Judicial statistics; (5) Cities; (6) Landed
property; (7) Farming, including statistics of crops, do-
mestic animals and forestry; (8) Mining; (9) Industries;
(10) Foreign commerce; (11) Railways and other means of
communication; and (12) Finances and credit. Each group
of tables is followed by>a brief text and a summary, and every
number contains monographs discussing subjects of demo-
graphic or economic statistical character.
The sum total of the observations to be made after a
survey of the work of the Central Statistical Office is rather
33
498 MEMORIAL VOLUME
discouraging and so admitted by its leading men. The or-
ganization for administrative statistics apparently follows
the best European model; but as a matter of fact, "two
offices of secondary character were created: the one with-
out authority, without obligations and without means, and
therefore leading only a fictitious existence; the other with
large duties and rights but lacking personnel and material
means for performing its duties and exercising its rights and
without any initiative whatsoever outside of the Ministry
of the Interior." Nevertheless, "the sore spot in our sta-
tistics is not to be sought in these but in the lowest organs
charged with the duty of investigating." It is, therefore,
not to be wondered at that "we not only do not know the
condition of life in the individual parts of the most extensive
state in the world, but not even the condition of the different
activities, the number of persons concerned with them, nor
yet the growth of population in the Empire as a whole. We
lack data not only in regard to the composition of the culti-
vated area but in regard to the total area. We have no com-
plete account of the settlements of the Empire." For these
reasons, "the central statistical offices of Russia need to be
radically reformed, the intermediary (provincial) organs need
to be developed, and the lower immediately observing organs
to be created anew. "
III. Proposed Reorganization of the Central Statistical
Office
For nearly ten years the leading members of the central
office, first General Solotarew and then Professor Georgiew-
ski, have been occupied with working out and putting into
effect just such a reform. In 1908 a plan was prepared and
submitted to the Duma but it had to do only with the reform
of the central office. The authors of the plan saw clearly
that the reform should include the local organs of statistics
in the Ministry of the Interior. But financial considera-
tions— as the Central Statistical Office puts it — made it de-
sirable " to limit the plan for the present to the reorganization
RUSSIA 499
of the central organs and to refer the consideration of further
reforms to a higher statistical authority, to be created for
that purpose." The Duma sanctioned the draft of the law
in its principal features. The upper chamber, however, the
Senate, took the stand which, for reasons to be referred to
later, had moved expert circles to oppose the scheme sharply,
namely, that a reform of the central office without a corre-
sponding reorganization, that is, a re-creation of the local
organs, would not produce any essential improvement. A
new scheme was therefore prepared in 1911 which aimed at a
reform both of the central and provincial offices for adminis-
trative statistics as well as at the establishment of district
offices and the organization of the mediums for important
statistical observation. This plan was submitted to the law-
making powers in 1913, but at the outbreak of the war had
not been thoroughly discussed. When more peaceful times
will permit this to be done cannot be predicted.
The first reform plan would divorce the highest statistical
authority from the Ministry of the Interior and, according
to German example, place it immediately under the president
of the council of ministers. According to the second reform
plan, it was to remain in the Ministry of the Interior but to be
given a more exalted position. The highest advisory author-
ity is to retain the name of a Statistical Advisory Council
and a majority of its members, as in the case of the existing
advisory council, is to be made up of delegates from the ad-
ministrative offices, but is to be strengthened by a number of
representatives of statistical science and by sixteen delegates
from the municipal and rural self-governments (zemstvo).
It is to be the duty of this council to give opinions in regard
to all fundamental questions of organization, the plans for
work in statistical offices of all kinds, and in regard to the
statistical undertakings of the self-governments and the plans
of all enumerations. The present central office is to be made
a "Chief Statistical Administration" with a director having
the rank of an under-secretary of state and his deputy at its
head. The number of assistants (editors) is fixed at fifteen
500 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and divided into three groups with special supervisors.
Furthermore, the chief administration is to have at its dis-
posal five instructors in charge of the relations of the central
office to the local offices. The authority of the chief ad-
ministration is to include not only "responsibility for the
development of statistics and of statistical knowledge in the
empire" in general (practically speaking, this is but a form
of speech), as well as the immediate care of the population
statistics, the statistics of occupation, of landed property and
agricultiu-e, the statistics of all branches of administration
belonging to the Department of the Interior as well as of
those branches of statistics for which no special offices exist
within the different ministries; furthermore, the supervision
of enumerations of all kinds and, finally, the conduct of sta-
tistical investigations required of the council of ministers
and the different ministries. According to the first plan,
the chief administration should assume charge of all branches
of statistics which at the present time are under the offices of
the different ministries, the latter being restricted to statis-
tics of importance and necessary for purposes of practical
administration. So pronounced a centralization met a sharp
opposition from all sides and was given up in the second plan.
In addition to the advisory council and the chief administra-
tion, the proposed statistical organization moreover provides
for a "statistical committee," a species of smaller council,
which should support the chief administration in its sta-
tistical activities and discuss in a preliminary way matters to
be brought before the whole council. The committee, under
the chairmanship of the director of the chief administration,
is to consist of higher officials of the chief administrations
and of delegates from the different ministries. In other
words, it is to be purely of a bureaucratic character.
In the new plan the local organization has been given the
form of a hierarchy of provincial and district commissions
as advisory bodies and of provincial and district offices as
active statistical organs. The offices in question really
exist in the persons of the provincial and district statisticians
RUSSIA 501
who are assisted by minor officials. The provincial and
district statisticians are conceived of as experts with ap-
propriate official and pecuniary status. The district sta-
tisticians are ex-officio vice presidents of the district com-
mission and members of the provincial commission. In
the latter the provincial statistician is the acting and re-
sponsible member {nepremjennyji Tsohlen). For the rest,
the composition of the commissions is about the same as that
of the existing provincial offices. They consist of leading
officials of the different administrative branches and of
delegates (8 in the provincial commission and 6 in the district
commission), of municipal councillors and of rural assemblies,
and finally of elected active and honorary members under
the chairmanship of the governors for the provincial com-
missions and of the marshal of the nobility for the district
commissions. The authority of the commissions is analogous
to that of the chief statistical council but within limits of
correspondingly narrow territories. The provincial offices,
in fact, play more of a mediating than independent r61e.
The real working force of the chief local organization is the
district statistician. He has charge of all enumerating
investigations within the district, collects all the data de-
manded by the central or provincial offices, prepares the
statistical data for each district and, what is perhaps most
important, he has charge of the recording and instruction of
the " cooperating members, " that is, of correspondents who,
so far as possible, are evenly distributed throughout the
district and who have the duty to provide the district office
with all the data and statements required according to pre-
scribed schedules and within definite periods. For this
they may either demand a small pecuniary compensation or
certain distinctions (medals). The district statistician has
power to appoint these correspondents and to discharge those
who have shown themselves to be incompetent.
An essential part of the organization, as planned for the
local organs, are the meetings of statisticians. The district
statisticians have such twice a year under the leadership
502 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of the provincial statistician. For the discussion of ques-
tions of statistical interest in a wider sense special meetings
for different jurisdictions may be had, but only with per-
mission of the minister, and they are to be participated in
by all provincial and district statisticians of the respective
jurisdictions and by delegates from the administrative
branches interested and other competent persons, but of the
latter only those may take part who are appointed or in-
vited by the director of the chief administration. The chair-
man is in every instance to be appointed by the Minister of
the Interior, who must also approve of any resolutions taken.
The expenses of the proposed reform are estimated at
4,900,000 roubles, of which 500,000 would be given to the
central organization and to an institute for teaching sta-
tistics to be mentioned later on; 788,000 to the provincial
and 3,615 roubles to the district commissions and oflSces.
It is not easy to judge definitely in regard to the organiza-
tion of the Russian administrative statistics as planned by
Professor Georgiewski. Undoubtedly, an effort has been
made to improve the existing conditions. One advantage
is that no thoroughgoing centralization of statistics is in-
tended. In the evolution of Russian statistics toward de-
centralization, a number of branches of statistics in the
different departments have developed happily, and it is
very much to be doubted that a Central Statistical Office
would be capable of administering them any better. It
causes a certain disquietude that in the second plan an at-
tempt is made to join the governmental statistics with those
of the self-governing communities. This might easily lead
to the bureaucratization of the latter and it would be better
to let the spontaneous development of the municipal and
the zemstvo statistics have a free course, for especially the
last mentioned show conspicuous scientific and practical
merit.
I^The gravest doubt attaches to the two advisory bodies
proposed in connection with the central organization. Even
in the large statistical council the scientific statistical element
RUSSIA 503
as well as the wide social interest for which the delegates of
the municipalities and the zemstvos stand, are far too scant-
ily represented; the majority would be bureaucratic. In
practice, the rejuvenated large council which must meet
"not less than once a year" would not prove itself more
capable of life than the present one. The smaller council
or committee would be purely bureaucratic, completely
tied up to the chief of the central administration, and with-
out a vestige of scientific elements. So far as the central
administration itself is concerned, an increase of its personnel
and material means is absolutely essentiaL That the same
can be said of the complicated hierarchy planned is to be
doubted. Of far greater importance is the scientific quali-
fication and statistical experience of the assistants for which,
however, the plan does not afford a suflScient guarantee.
The proposed organization of the local offices would un-
questionably be a step in advance. The commissions would
hardly be made more serviceable than they now are, but the
provincial and district statisticians represent a working
force not to be undervalued. It also seems to me a happy
thought to secure the important observing organization
through a network of correspondents. But it will not be easy
for the central office administration to command the neces-
sary large number of thoroughly trained statisticians; and
the problem would have been made easier if it could get into
closer touch with the municipal and zemstvo organizations
without endangering their independence. It is conceivable
that the statistical bureaus of the cities and the zemstvos
might take over the functions of the local organs for admin-
istrative statistics. The last mentioned would perhaps
serve best for this purpose and save an unnecessary waste
of the forces at the disposal of the municipal bureaus. In
any case it is to be regretted that the plan has completely
ignored the personnel of these bureaus and does not even in-
tend them to have a place on the commissions planned, where
they would be more serviceable than most of the bureaucratic
members. Finally, the idea of statistical meetings is
504 MEMORIAL VOLUME
thoroughly to be commended provided they become free
scientific meetings and not, as planned, purely gatherings
of officials.
IV. Departmental Statistical Ofices
I turn next to the branches of Russian statistics carried
on by statistical offices in the different administrative de-
partments. In spite of any special value that may attach
to their statistical undertakings and publications, they offer
far less that is characteristic of Russian administrative
statistics than the statistics of the central office in the Minis-
try of the Interior.
The Ministry of Agriculture (known since 1905 as the
chief administration for rural and agricultural affairs) has
had a special division for rural economics and agricultural
statistics since 1894; but its personnel is limited to six as-
sistants. The beginning of statistics in this ministry dates
from the early eighties of the previous centirry; and the
famine of 1880 instigated it. From the very outset the
data have been obtained through voluntary correspond-
ents, following the American method. At first the number
of correspondents was very small, consisting of but 1,257
in 1881, the average number for the decade 1881-91 being
1,900. At present the number varies from seven and one
half to nine thousand. The territorial distribution of the cor-
respondents is, however, very uneven, so that certain prov-
inces and districts are plentifully and ot:hers very meagerly
supplied. Originally the schedules used were filled out three
times a year, but since 1890 five times. Early in May,
preliminary reports are obtained in regard to the condition
of the winter grain; in the beginning of June a complete
report for the spring period; in the beginning of July a brief
preliminary report is required in regard to the crop pros-
pects; in the beginning of September a completer report
for the summer crop; and in the middle of November one of
the same kind for the winter period and, besides, different
statements bearing on agriculture for the whole year. The
RUSSIA 505
current publications of crop prospects and data relative to
the harvest first appeared in the oflficial "Government Ad-
vertiser," and what pertained to the technique of agriculture
in a special publication in the same ministry. The whole
material was finally published in a volume that reached the
public after the close of the year. Beginning in the nineties
the final pubUcation was made in three issues, at the present
time in six, of which five are published immediately after
the respective reports have been received, and the sixth, a
large volume, at the close of the year.
Thus the statistics of crops which are both scientifically
and practically of great importance, are divided between
two departments completely independent of each other. It
would perhaps be more correct to say between three, because
reports of crops also reach the Ministry of Finance through
the tax inspectors who are scattered over the whole country.
But the reports of these inspectors are only for departmental
use, so that the general statistics are in fact derived only
from the two above-mentioned departments, the Central
Statistical Office and the statistical division of the Minis-
try of Agriculture. Considering their respective value, the
statistics of the Central Office have the advantage in quanti-
tative respects and those of the Ministry of Agriculture in
qualitative respects. The reports obtained by the Central
Office through the local administrative organs are not only
very numerous but distributed very evenly throughout the
entire country. On the other hand, the reports obtained by
the Ministry of Agriculture are very much less numerous
and very unevenly distributed, which impairs the compar-
ability of the average numbers. In regard to the quality of
the material, the method of the Central Office, "which is
based on the services of the administrative organs, must oc-
casion fear among the people that higher figures for the
harvests might lead to increased taxation and that therefore
the figures of the Central Office ought to be below the actual."
The method employed by the Ministry of Agriculture obviates
this motive or at any rate affords it less play, "but the cor-
506 MEMORIAL VOLUME
respondents are as a rule comparatively well-to-do cultiva-
tors, and accordingly their returns of crops should be above
the actual average." Since the statistics of the Ministry
of Agriculture are on an average about 20 per cent, higher
than those of the Central Office, the truth must lie somewhere
between the two extremes. Even today it cannot be defi-
nitely determined just where the line is to be drawn, in
spite of much special investigation and explanation on the
part of zemstvo statisticians. According to the compilation
made by Professor Fortunatow, from which the above cita-
tions are taken, the average difference between the two
sources of statistics is only 16.7 per cent, for the Black Earth
belt, and for the northern half of European Russia lying
outside this belt, 23.6 per cent. This is due to the fact that
the state of cultivation of the soil in the Black Earth belt
is comparatively uniform while in the northern district it
varies greatly. Outside of the Black Earth belt these
differences mark the results much more; and the consequence
is that the average numbers of the Ministry of Agriculture
is influenced in a much higher degree by the composition
of the personnel of the correspondents than in the Black
Earth belt. The Ministry of Agriculture follows the same
methodological principle in fundamental statistics as in
cm-rent statistics. From time to time special reports are
obtained from the same correspondents relative to definite
questions in agricultiu-al statistics and also about the tech-
nique of agriculture and economic matters pertaining to it.
The results of these studies are published under the general
title "Agricultural and Statistical Information {Swjedjenja)
Based on Statements of Cultivators." The publications of
this class appearing at greater or lesser intervals have dealt
with wages and agriculture, the cost of producing grains, the
density of seeding, the distribution of improved agricultural
implements and machines, the cultivation of vegetables for
feed, the distribution of stable or artificial fertilizers. They
contain much that is of value, expressed both in figures and
RUSSIA 507
in descriptive text, and have largely received a fortunate
expert treatment.
Finally, mention should be made of the reference books
published by the division for agricultural statistics. In
1903 there appeared in three volumes a "Compilation (Swod)
of Statistical Data for Russian Agriculture at the Close of
the Nineteenth Century," with a map of graphic exhibits.
It contains a carefully wrought statistical pictiu-e of the
principal elements of agriculture, with retrospective numbers
covering several years. Since 1908 a year book has been
published under the title "Collection of Statistical Data in
Regard to the Agriculture of Russia and of Foreign Coun-
tries." The exceedingly extensive material contained in
this book may be grouped under the following titles: Agri-
culture, cultivated area and results of harvests; intensive
cultivation; manufacturing industries; stock farming, fish-
eries and game; agricultural exports and imports, and in-
ternational commerce in agricultural products; prices and
rural wages; rural credit; means of transport and transpor-
tation of agricultural products; the production and importa-
tion of agricultural machines and implements. The reader
may note the absence of forestry. The explanation is that
the Forestry Department, belonging to the same ministry,
has independent charge of the state forests and forestry activ-
ity in general and publishes separate reports on the subject.
Among the other divisions of the Ministry of Agriculture
the supreme office for the registration and division of land
has a special statistical office consisting of assistant super-
visors and two assistants whose nominal function it is to
compile "Surveys of the Activity of Land Registration
Offices," which is done from the statistical point of view.
At present it has an interesting statistical task which has
not yet been completed, namely, to prepare the results of
an experimental study carried out in twelve districts in
regard to the results of land registration.
The administration for emigration and colonization, which
was added to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1905, occupies
508 MEMORIAL VOLUME
a singular position. It does not appear to have an independ-
ent statistical division although very extensive statistical
work is undertaken relating not only to emigration and colo-
nization, but to the conditions of agriculture among the
older settlers and the native population of the different
districts of Asiatic Russia. The administration of emigra-
tion is in this respect a successor to the former Ministry of
Agriculture as it took over all the affairs of this department
pertaining to land registration in Asiatic Russia and the
division of land for purposes of colonization. It was neces-
sary to obtain a statistical basis for the land registration
laws and for their execution. In order to effect this an agra-
rian statistical expedition was organized in the eighties and
nineties. Its investigations, covering five enormous prov-
inces of Siberia proper, were carried out largely according
to models provided by the zemstvo statistics and resulted
in an extensive and in many respects valuable economic-
statistical material, partly purely statistical and partly
descriptive. When lands for purposes of colonization were
to be set aside in the large nomadic districts of Asiatic Russia,
it was necessary to come to terms with the native nomadic
or semi-nomadic population. Again a statistical basis was
required and in the middle of the nineties a new statistical
expedition was organized. Its work still goes on and has
yielded a rich statistical material. It is not in place to dis-
cuss the practical utilization of this material obtained which
gives rise to much misgiving; purely as a statement of facts
it is of very great value. The actual statistics of emigration
consist on the one hand of current statistics of the movement
of emigrants, which movement is registered statistically at
the chief centers of emigration (at the present time partic-
ularly Tscheljabinsk) and has been embodied in a series of
volumes dealing not only with the fact of emigration but
seeking to determine statistically the accompanying cir-
cumstances and to show the inner characteristics of the
emigration and the impulse toward it. On the other hand,
the statistics of emigration deal with new settlements relative
RUSSIA 509
to the utilization of the soil and conditions of health. Partial
studies of this kind were undertaken in the different Asiatic
provinces in the last decade of the preceding century. In
1903 and 1911 more extensive investigations were begun, in-
cluding the whole field of colonization, but were not of an
exhaustive kind as the sampling method was followed. The
mode of procedure was in essentials copied from the zemstvo
statistics; but the value of the results has been impaired to
some extent by the fact that the entire organization and the
conduct of the inquiries were too largely influenced by colo-
nization officials who were directly interested.
In regard to statistical activity the Ministry of Finance,
together with the Ministries of Commerce and Industry
which were separated from it in 1905, occupies one of the
first positions. The statistics of foreign commerce are in
charge of a special division of the Revenue Department con-
sisting at present of one superintendent and ten assistants,
and which has at its disposal twice as much money as the
Central Statistical Office in the Ministry of the Interior.
The operations of this branch date from the early part of the
nineteenth century. Already at that time a publication
appeared under the title "The Foreign Commerce of the
Russian Empire in its Principal Aspects." Owing to the
slight development of Russian commerce at the period, it
accordingly dealt briefly with this subject but touched upon
much larger complex of affairs (import and export, shipping,
foreign travel and prices) than is found in the present-day
statistics of the revenue department. The publication in
question gradually increased in size, was called "Aspects of
the Foreign Commerce of the Russian Empire," and has
been known since 1860 by its present title "Survey of the
Foreign Commerce of Russia." Self-evidently the revenue
offices serve as investigating agents, tintil the middle of the
nineties, their statistical organization was of the decentral-
ized kind : the various revenue offices were obliged to trans-
mit to the revenue department monthly, semi-annual and
annual reports, prepared according to prescribed schedules
510 MEMORIAL VOLUME
which provided a complete account of the different kinds
and classes of goods. The present organization is strictly
centralized, and due to the insistence of the former zemstvo
statistician, W. Pokrowski. The methods of registration
introduced by him and the mechanical means adopted for
the compilation of the data make the Russian statistics of
foreign commerce some of the most complete of their kind
from a technical point of view. The publications are first
issued as monthly reports and at the close of the year as the
above-mentioned very extensive surveys.
The chief administration for indirect taxes and the vodka
monopoly* possesses a well developed statistical organization
which likewise was perfected by former zemstvo statisti-
cians. At the present time the statistical division under
consideration consists of a superintendent and eleven as-
sistants. The annual reports prepared by it appear in two
large volumes, one dealing with the statistics of the vodka
monopoly, the other with all the branches of production
liable to taxation and therefore under the supervision of the
administration for indirect taxes; and among them may be
mentioned especially distilleries, sugar refineries, breweries,
match factories, yeast factories, the cultivation and manu-
facture of tobacco, the production of naphtha, etc. The sta-
tistics of the branches of production subject to imposts
contain a rich material of general interest. It affords a
wealth of data, classified according to the character of the
different kinds of production concerning the size and tech-
nical equipment of the industries; the amount produced at
different stages, selling prices and exports, finally the number
and classification of employees and their wages. In short,
the statistics of the chief administration for indirect taxa-
tion are a valuable source of Russian industrial statistics and
also the most reliable, as the officials concerned gain a com-
plete insight into the conditions of the respective under-
takings ex officio and as the registration of statistics stands in
the closest relation to the business control exercised.
*Abolished since this article was vnitten. — ^Ed.
RUSSIA 511
For the present, I pass by the statistics of the railway
department, which it seems more appropriate to mention in
connection with the Ministry of TraflBc. It remains, how-
ever, to call attention to the statistics of the Department for
Direct Taxation and those of the Peasant Bank. The first
mentioned possesses an independent statistical division but
it occupies a relatively unimportant place among general
statistics. The division compiles the crop reports of the
tax inspectors but only incident to the business needs of the
ministry. For general use it publishes in great detail sta-
tistics of the local self-governments (zemstvos), in most re-
cent times also statistics of municipalities, and finally, sta-
tistics relating to the entire governmental rural and urban
direct taxation. The so-called "Kataster" division in the
same department is likewise much occupied with statistical
work. It publishes, among other things, a very valuable
report on the changes in real estate ownership which is based
upon the data obtained from the archives of the notaries
public and to be regarded as the principal source of real
estate statistics. It suffers, however, from the defect which
can hardly be avoided of being very belated; thus, for in-
stance, the issue for 1908 did not appear until 1914. The
statistics of the Peasant Bank are also actively concerned
with the movement in rural landed property, a large division
with a superintendent and nine responsible assistants being
maintained for that purpose. By advancing money the
Peasant Bank makes it possible for the rural population to
purchase estates. In the latest years the Bank has bought
lands for its own account, parcelling them out and selling
them as farms on long credit, and thereby becomes one of
the agents of the new Russian agrarian policy which is con-
cerned with the extinction of communal lands and bringing
them into individual ownership. For this reason the sta-
tistical statements showing the activity of the Bank are of
fundamental importance to the knowledge of the present-
day agrarian development. The statistics are first published
in the annual reports of accounts which are partly of a com-
512 MEMORIAL VOLUME
mercial character but also bear a definite statistical stamp.
Moreover, they appear from time to time in statistical sur-
veys whose objective value, however, is diminished by the
too pronounced official apologetic color.
Finally, attention should be called to the current sta-
tistical information contained in the periodical publications
of the Ministry of Finance which constitute first-class sources
of knowledge. Among them is the weekly "Official Mes-
senger" (Wjestnik Finanssow) and the daily "Journal of
Commerce and Industry. " Both contain a mass of material
in regard to finance, banking, commerce, industry, rural af-
fairs, etc., in addition to numerous articles covering widely
different questions of industry and commercial statistics,
many of which can lay claim to considerable scientific value.
The editors of the journals also publish the Year Book of the
Ministry of Finance. It is conspicuous among almost all
other publications of Russian official statistics because it
appears punctually and sets forth a very complete and care-
fully prepared material concerning governmental finance,
credit, banks, stock companies, railways and other means
of transportation, industries (chiefly producing branches
liable to taxation), rural and municipal finances, and finally,
in condensed form, statistics of the foreign commerce of
Russia.
Two statistical offices have been placed under the Ministry
of Commerce and Industry which in 1905 was given an in-
dependent existence: one in the ministerial office and the
other in the Department for Industry, each with its own
superintendent and assistants. Among the publications of
the first-mentioned division is the regular "Annual Report
of Prices of Commodities" {Swod towarnych Zen). It con-
tains a retrospective compilation of prices covering a period
of from eighteen to twenty years, but relative only to a
few standard commodities and in one or at most two ruling
Ulterior markets. The prices are given in absolute averages
and then in relation to the first decennial average and finally
the general index numbers are calculated. The actual
RUSSIA SIS
annual report gives the prices of different commodities for all
the more important domestic and foreign markets. The
nimiber of the markets included varies according to the com-
modity from two and three to 150; the prices are given in
monthly maximum and minimum averages, then in annual
averages for the year of the report, the three preceding years
and for two quinquennial periods. The publication appear-
ing for the first time in the year 1900 under the title "The
Commerce and Industry of European Russia According to
Districts" deserves special mention. Preparation seems to
be making to issue it in a new form. The plan prepared by
present superintendent of the statistical division, B. Ssemen-
ow, is based upon a compilation of oflScial statistics of com-
merce, industry and traffic from the most varied sources.
The publication in question calls for a general characteriza-
tion for the ten great divisions of European Russia of com-
merce, industry and goods traffic according to kinds; then a
summary description of the separate subdivisions which in
industrial matters are clearly homogeneous, following the
same rubrics. For the whole area as well as for the sub-
divisions a text combined with tables is to be published,
stating the final results for each separate subdivision and
summarizing them in index numbers to illustrate the in-
dustrial strength of each.
The statistics of the industrial department are regularly
published in an "Annual Summary {Swod) of the Reports
of Factory Inspectors," in which a fairly rich statistical
material is presented, and chiefly under the following heads:
The number of industrial undertakings subject to inspection,
grouped according to size and the number of employees; the
official activity of the inspectors; the inspection of steam
boilers; accidents and compensation for the same; mediat-
ing activity of the inspectors; strikes, etc. Most of these
matters are shown by provinces and the larger classes of
industries. Some of the continuous subjects dealt with in
this service are from time to time treated in monographs,
among which special mention should be made of the valuable
34
514 MEMORIAL VOLUME
monographs on strikes, by W. Warser, former chief of the Cen-
tral Statistical Office and also formerly a zemstvo statisti-
cian. Two investigations in the form of enumerations of
the industrial undertakings of the country originated with
the same author. One of these dealt exclusively with the
branches of industry that are subject to factory inspection but
not liable to special taxation. The schedules distributed by
the inspectors among the directors of the different concerns
were tested when completed, first by the inspectors and then
in the statistical office. The results were published in a
thick volume under the title " Statistical Data of Manufac-
tures in the Branches of Industry Subject to Factory In-
spection." It contains twelve subdivisions for the great
industrial categories, with a further classification of the
material according to the kinds of production within prov-
inces and districts. For each division, four tables are
given, the first presenting general facts — the number of
institutions, the number of employees and their ages, the
number of steam boilers and other motors, the expenditure
for fuel, the money value of machines, etc. The second
table states the quantity and value of the different kinds of
manufactured raw material; the third, the quantity and
value of the finished and half -finished manufactures; and
the fourth, the number of employees, work hours, machines
and apparatus. The investigation was repeated in 1908,
when also the branches of industry not subject to factory
inspection — governmental undertakings, smelting works and,
so far as possible, small industries and rural concerns, were
included. The method of inquiry was the same in principle
but on account of a number of untoward circumstances it
was exceedingly difficult to complete it, and part of the ma-
terial relating to the small industries proved to be very
defective. Furthermore, for official reasons, the questions
about the manufactured raw material were left out, and this
in considerable degree increased the difficulty of controlling
the statements. Subsequently the plan of the publication
was much simplified. For every group of statistical data
RUSSIA 515
in regard to manufacturing industries in 1908 only two tables
are given, one of which contains general facts and the other
data in regard to the finished product.
The Ministry of Traffic has a statistical office which is
organized on comparatively broad lines. It is called the
"Division for Statistics and Cartography," holds the rank
of a ministerial department, and has a staff of three super-
vising editors, six independent assistants and seven "cal-
culators." As the title indicates, the division is active not
only in statistical but in hydro- and cartographic work, for it
is charged with the enumeration and description of the water-
ways of the country. Statistically, the division deals chiefly
with railways and river navigation. The statistics of rail-
ways form a continuous series from 1891 on. Each annual
report contains most completely prepared statements in
regard to the length of the railway lines and tracks, locomo-
tives and rolling stock, the work performed by them stated
in absolute and relative numbers, fuel, composition and
movement of the railway trains, passengers and freight traf-
fic, gross and net receipts, the financial condition of the
railways and the cost of the different kinds of traffic, the
official personnel and laborers, and finally a detailed clas-
sification of accidents. In short, it deals with the entire
activity of the railways. The statistics of transportation of
the principal standard goods (grain, salt, fuel and building
material) form an independent part and are presented in
relation to railway lines, direction, places of shipment and
destination. As already mentioned, the railway department
in the Ministry of Finance, which according to the Russian
organization of the railway systems is in charge of the tariffs
and other railway policies, likewise publishes statistics of all
different kinds of goods traffic. This department also
publishes summary statistics (Swodnaja) of the goods traffic,
the expense of which is borne by the united railways. This
compilation appears annually in a number of volumes, each
of which deals with a certain group of goods. The statistics
of interior navigation are published annually under the title
516 MEMORIAL VOLUME
"The Interior Waterways," etc. They include the number
of the vessels and barges departing and arriving, the total
amount and value of the goods transported, classified by
harbors and places of lading as well as by direction; further-
more, the amount transported of the greater number of stand-
ard goods; the arrival at seaports and other important places
of destination of nineteen of the most important classes of
goods; a series of data and calculations of a technical kind
relating to transportation; and finally the passenger traffic
presented according to places of departure and destination.
Only brief mention need be made of the statistics of the
Ministry of Popular Education, as they are largely in the
nature of internal administrative statistics. Of special
importance alone is the enumeration of the elementary
schools in the empire, made in 1911 under the direction of
W. Pokrowski who also compiled the returns. The schedules
used were filled out by the school teachers and show condi-
tions as of the 18th of January (Feb. 1st). The results were
published in eight numbers containing five tables grouped
according to provinces, districts and school categories:
First, a general characterization of the schools, their number
and distribution according to the length of the period of
instruction, the number of teachers and scholars, the number
turned away, the number having left after completing a
course or prior to it, and a numerical characterization of
the school rooms. Then follow tables for the teaching staffs
according to their personal relations, education, time of
service, salaries and conditions of dwelling; and one for the
scholars who are classified by sex and age, nationality, re-
ligious confession, social class, school attendance and home
conditions. All these data are given separately for munici-
palities and country districts. A fourth table presents
statistics of the financial condition of the schools; while
the fifth deals with libraries and other mediums of teaching
and with instruction in special branches such as singing,
drawing, handicrafts, gymnastics, etc.
RUSSIA 517
The statistics of the Ministry of Justice constitute a branch
in which Russia occupies, if not the first place, at least one
of the first places among European states. The statistical
division of this ministry employs in addition to the supervi-
sor, who at the present is a well-known expert, E. Tamowski,
one editor and ten assistants. The statistical activity of the
Ministry of Justice covers judicial and criminal statistics,
for each of which separate volumes are regularly published.
The judicial statistics comprise a numerical account of the
personnel and the official activity of the different courts and
tribunals in Russia, from the highest court of appeal to the
executioner of judgments. Of the criminal statistics it may
be said that their only but essential defect is their narrow
compass. They are limited to the persons convicted under
the jurisdiction of the higher criminal courts and to those
sentenced to imprisonment after being convicted by the
justices of the peace and rural magistrates. The data are
recorded in individual schedules at the place of trial and,
as customary in other European countries, contain a maxi-
mum of questions relative to the personal characteristics of
the convict. When completed, the schedules are at once
transmitted to the Ministry of Justice where they are dealt
with in a twofold manner: First, an alphabetical list is made
of the condemned, which appears every month and is sent
to all court and police officers. Its sole purpose is to serve
as a guide in determining the number of recidivists. The
second compilation is carried out with great detail and fol-
lows criminological points of view. The results are pubhshed
under the title "Compilation (Swod) of Statistical Data in
regard to the Accused, the Acquitted and the Condemned. "
It falls into two sharply divided parts, one dealing with the
persons tried by the district and appellate courts and the
other with those tried by justices of the peace, etc. Both
parts afford a general survey, first according to courts and
secondly according to classes of offences, giving the total
number of persons tried, acquitted and sentenced, together
with extenuating circumstances and penalties imposed.
518 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Then follows a tabulation in which classes of offences are
shown; places of trial; age, marital relations and occupation;
furthermore, a long series of special tables, one showing by
classes of offences the other by place of trial, data in regard
to marital relations, education, occupation, nationality, relig-
ious confession, legitimate or illegitimate birth, legal social
class, place of birth, alcoholism, the month and place in
which the crime was committed. Finally, the recidivists are
classified by age, occupation, nationality, previous punish-
ment, with particulars in regard to general and special forms
of recidivism.
This closes our review of the Russian oflScial statistical
imdertakings and publications, which has been obtained at
much pains owing to their being so extremely scattered. It
remains to mention the statistics of the self-governing or-
ganizations and the private statistical enterprises. So far
as the latter are concerned, I will refer but briefly to the
statistics of large industrial combinations which in Russia
have reached a considerable degree of development. Most
important among them is the combination of naphtha pro-
ducers in the Baku district whose special and current publica-
tions not only contain a many-sided description of the condi-
tions of production, transportation, sales and consumption
of the oil and its by-products, but also a series of extremely
valuable monographs in regard to the condition of the work-
men in the oil industry. Be it said that, greatly to their credit,
the united oil producers have not only known how to draw
to their statistical service very able men, especially from the
circle of former zemstvo statisticians, but have placed their
statistics in a completely independent position in so far as
the residts are removed from all suspicion of being intended
to influence class interests Second in importance in regard
to many-sidedness and the regularity of publication is the
statistical work of the combination of mine owners in south-
ern Russia. This trust publishes regular monthly and an-
nual reports of the coal and iron industries, the data covering
the stock on hand, production, sales, the number of employees
RUSSIA 519
and in part their condition. From time to time it publishes
monographs, for instance, on the consumption of coal by
railways, the activity of the zemstvos in providing the rural
population with iron, etc. The combination of sugar pro-
ducers undertakes statistical work of an analogous character
which, on account of the complicated selling and export
policies of this trust under governmental regulations, has
a marked practical value. Among the many other industrial
combinations that publish statistical reports I will only
refer as examples to those of the gold washers, cotton spin-
ners, large trusts such as the Prodameta (wholesale pro-
ducers of iron and iron goods), etc. Special mention should
be made, however, of the statistical activity of the combina-
tion of flax producers who some years ago made and financed
an ambitious investigation of the conditions prevailing in
the flax industry, which was carried out by prominent men
according to the best models of the zemstvo statistics. Fi-
nally, I would mention the central organization of the Rus-
sian combination known under the name of "Council of the
Representatives of Commerce and Industry," which has
created an independent statistical office. Its current work
appears in summary form in a weekly publication. More
important is the "Statistical Year Book" published by the
head of the office. Dr. Schary, which, considering Russian
conditions, appears with the utmost regularity, is rich in
contents touching the whole field of industrial statistics and
unquestionably to be regarded as the best Russian statistical
reference work of a general character.
As a result of the relatively feeble development of urban
life, municipal statistics in Russia by no means hold the
same place as, for instance, in Germany. Aside from the
two capitals, Petrograd and Moscow, only a few of the
Russian cities have established special statistical services.
Moreover, the municipal investigations and publications of
statistics do not offer anything especially characteristic so far
as Russia is concerned. Mention should be made, however,
of the municipal enumerations of population which have
520 MEMORIAL VOLUME
taken place in Petrograd four times since 1881 and three
times in Moscow since 1882. The plans of inquiry followed
in these enumerations measure up to the best west European
models. In principle, the west European method of inquiry
by means of schedules to be filled out by the individuals, has
been retained; but it has always been combined with a cer-
tain amount of oral interrogation which is necessary on ac-
count of the low level of culture in the large cities. It is
to be expected that the method of oral inquiry will become
the prevailing one, as under Russian conditions it is certain
to yield more satisfactory results.
V. The Zemstvo Statistics
The other branch of statistics of self-governing organ-
izations require a much more thorough consideration. I
refer to the statistics of the zemstvos which are altogether
peculiar to Russia. The Russian zemstvo which has existed
since 1864 is a complex of provincial and district oflSces and
executive committees {semskaja Uprawa) which are charged
with administering a fairly extensive number of economic
and cultural affairs of the population, and for this purpose
are armed, within legally defined limits, with the right of
self-taxation. Out of these duties arose the necessity of
organizing special statistical services for the zemstvos. Two
circumstances furnished the immediate occasion: The need
of a statistical basis for the redistribution of taxes on real
property, and the obligation imposed on the zemstvos to
provide grain in years of crop failures. The first of these
circumstances was undoubtedly the more important, namely,
the necessity of determining statistically the ground value
and the rental value of the taxable land. This definitely
practical or fiscal task was, however, very soon superseded
by another of much broader nature — the statistical de-
termination of the economic and other conditions of existence
among the rural population. This expansion of the work
of the zemstvo statistics sprang partly from the zemstvos
themselves but chiefly from the men who had entered the
RUSSIA 521
statistical service and whose national democratic and gener-
ally idealistic leaning made them believe that this service
offered one of the means for putting their national ideas into
effect.
The earliest beginnings of the zemstvo statistics date from
the year 1870. In 1871 and 1874 W. Pokrowski and N.
Romanow were appointed the first permanent statisticians
for the provinces of Twer and Wjatka. In 1875 the first
two statistical oflSces were established, those of Moscow
and Tschernigow, from which the two "tendencies" of the
zemstvo statistics have been derived, one being represented
by the Moscow man (W. Orlow) and the other by the men of
Tschernigow (P. Tscherwinski, A. Russow, and W. Warser).
Instigated by Jahnson the opinion gained currency that
while "the statisticians of Tschernigow made the soil, thie
Moscow statisticians made men the object of observation."
The classification of the different kinds of soil was regarded
as the principal task of the first-mentioned school, "to which
everything else was linked," while the principal effort of the
other was "the statistical characterization of every economic
unit and the examination of the general conditions of life
and work among the people." In common with such ex-
perts as Fortunatow or Russow I regard this way of contrast-
ing the two "types" as mistaken. Both strove for fiscal
as well as economic statistical aims, and it is largely due to
outward conditions that the Moscow statisticians have in
fact laid greater emphasis on one side and the Tschernigow
statisticians on the other. In truth the influence of the
Moscow statisticians by way of propaganda was much more
strongly felt than that of the Tschernigow statisticians, not
only on account of the central location of Moscow but es-
pecially on account of the eminent personal energy of Orlow.
It fell to him personally to organize the investigations in'
seven other zemstvos in which naturally the Moscow pro-
gram was almost literally reproduced, and his assistants con-
ducted them. The influence of the Tschernigow statisticians
was felt within the limited field in the provinces bordering
528 MEMORIAL VOLUME
on the Black Earth belt. Of the other offices for zemstvo
statistics the most important were those of Nischni-Nov-
gorod (N. Annenski), and of Woronesch (F. Stscherbina).
The first-mentioned office knew better than any other how
to harmonize the economic scientific aims of the statisti-
cians with the practical and especially the fiscal tasks of the
zemstvos, as it combined the true statistical investigations
with a species of land registration and with a physical
investigation of the small holdings.
A distinctive feature of the Woronesch school of statistics
is the budget study. Even the enumeration program was
arranged to account not only for the personnel and stocks
of the farm but also the pecuniary elements constituting
its annual budget. Stscherbina was besides the one of the
two zemstvo statisticians who has contributed most in work-
ing out programs and methods for the Russian monographic
budget studies.
What may be called the period of organization in the
history of the zemstvo statistics lasted until 1887, when the
newest of the zemstvo offices that were active during the
whole period until 1893 was established, namely that of
Nischni-Novgorod. Meanwhile the zemstvo statisticians
were at work in twenty three provinces. The most inten-
sive development of their activity occurred between 1883 and
1886. The reaction of the interested groups of large land
owners against the work of the zemstvo statisticians which
had made itself felt from the outset, became so accentuated
toward the end of the eighties that it caused a suspension of
investigations in many provinces. In 1893 only 17 of the
23 statistical offices remained active. The turning point in
the history of the zemstvo statistics occurred in 1893. Then
the land registration legislation which is in force today, and
was partially augmented in 1899, became effective and
served to radically change the position of the zemstvo
statistical offices.
The official purpose of these laws was to expedite the
registration undertaken by the zemstvos for purposes of
RUSSIA 523
taxation; but in fact the motive behind it actuating govern-
mental circles was to limit the authority of the zemstvo
and place the registration under the control of the state.
To attain this object the law of 1893 fixed obligatory
principles and methods of registration and at the same time
it created a registration commission consisting overwhelm-
ingly of bureaucratic members who were given direction and
control of the work. Thus the zemstvo statistics which
formerly were a free expression of the life of the zemstvos
became, through the law of 1893, an obligatory performance,
the cost of which was covered by a governmental appropria-
tion of one million roubles per year, while the distribution
of the work among the different zemstvos was made at the
pleasure of the Ministry of Finance. In this manner the
zemstvo statistics became an appendix to the fiscal registra-
tion of real estate ownership and subject to the direction of
a registration commission. As to the principles of registra-
tion, the law of 1893 established chiefly what already had
resulted from the previous practice of the zemstvos, except
that the principle of imposing taxes according to the produc-
ing value was given greater emphasis, while taxation accord-
ing to selling or renting prices received far less attention
than had been the case under the previous practice. Self-
evidently, the influence on the development of the zemstvo
statistics of the law whose essential traits have been indicated
was fortunate in quantitative respects, for statistical in-
vestigations had become obligatory, and even such zemstvos
as those of Ssimbirsk, Pensa, Kaluga, and others, in which
the land-owning nobility formerly had fought successfully
against investigations, found themselves under the necessity
of creating statistical oflfices. The investigations were gradu-
ally extended to all of the 34 provinces in which the zemstvo
organization had been introduced. Statistical offices were
immediately created also in those provinces of the east and
west into which this form of organization had made its way
during the most recent years. In qualitative respects the
effect of the law of 1893 and 1899 is to be judged quite dif-
524 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ferently. According to oflScial evidence "the bureaucratic
registration commissions, which were ill-adapted to direct
the complicated registration work, could not in any way
secure its continuous improvement. They became a hin-
drance to the development of the zemstvo statistics. The
leaders of the latter were obliged to waste an important part
of their energy in an incessant fight against the encroach-
ment of the commissions, and by no means gained any satis-
faction. " The statisticians were burdened with a multitude
of work which served only the purposes of registration and
had nothing to do with statistics as such. The schedules
teem with questions and rubrics interesting purely from
a registration point of view, and having little to do with
statistics. The instructions governing field work pay far too
much attention to all kinds of manipulations exclusively of a
registration character, while the real statistical side is neg-
lected. Both in the schedules and in the instructions a
species of "statistical formalism" prevails — an efifort to
force everything into columns and tabular statements.
This can probably not be avoided in view of the fiscal tasks
of the present investigations as well as of the accidental
composition of the working personnel due to the variety of
the investigations, but cannot help paralysing the zeal for
investigation and initiative on the part of the statisticians.
Nevertheless, the zemstvo statistics continue on the whole
to move forward to the aim marked out for them at the
beginning, that is of extending and making fruitful in-
vestigations touching the life of the people.
The leading men in zemstvo statistics came into the new
period we have discussed with firmly ingrained traditions and
methodological principles, and continued to follow them un-
der the new outward conditions. They took the stand that
even an investigation instituted solely for purposes of regis-
tration "must follow the same statistical method and be made
up of the same parts as the economic-statistical investiga-
tions of the type created in zemstvo statistics" (Annenski).
They emphasized their right and even their duty of not
RUSSIA 525
becoming involved in the solution of purely fiscal matters and
that the registration inquiries should be so fashioned "that
affairs having to do with general economic conditions are
not ignored"; and that the investigations "should be carried
out in connection with a study of the whole economic life
of the country" (Annenski, Pokrowski). Thus it has come
about that significant progress has been made in the sta-
tistical treatment of most questions relating to economic and
cultural conditions that have been undertaken by the zem-
stvo statisticians. The development of the sample method
of investigation and the refinement of monographic budget
studies belong to the same period. The rise of tendencies of
the Marxist school drew the interest of the zemstvo sta-
tisticians to the industrial activity of the rural population
and the indications of capitalistic differentiation which until
then had in a certain measure been neglected.
As is true of statistics generally, those of the zemstvos may
be divided into the basic and the current. The first men-
tioned "have as their object to present the general economic
conditions in connection with the means of production at
hand"; the second "relate to the periodic manifestations
of the separate economic years" (Fortunatow). The prin-
cipal methodological attainments of the zemstvo statisticians
are in the field of basic statistics. They have cut loose from
the procedm-e followed in western Europe of obtaining
written statements and rely upon oral interrogation, which
in Russia is carried on by means of the so-called expedition
method. That is to say, the district under observation is
regularly traveled over by officials of the statistical office
who visit all the settlements and seek information through
oral questions. The inspection of the objects under consid-
eration (especially the one of utilizing the soil) plays a sub-
sidiary r61e, which is likewise true of the study of documents
and other written material. It is apparent, of course, that
the oral method was made necessary by the low state of edu-
cation among the masses of the people and especially by the
very extended and detailed programs of investigation.
526 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The farm enumeration so-called in Russia has become the
chief part of the basic investigations. Its object is the enu-
meration of the elements of farming which vary in the individ-
ual cases. The schedule ordinarily used calls for statements
in regard to the stock on hand, the working force, the utiliza-
tion of the land and the means of production, but also seeks
to characterize the activity of the individuals belonging on
the farm when carried on by several persons. Questions
relating to money and other budget matters receive com-
paratively little attention, as already stated; a study of
these particulars is peculiar to the investigations made by
the Woronesch oflSce. As time progressed, the schedules
employed grew in detail. Even if it in certain instances
result in a superabundance, great detail is desirable; for it
makes it possible to determine more nearly the facts under
consideration, not to mention the larger and deeper-going
aims, and heightens the popular interest in the work. The
inner relation of the distinguishing marks of the schedule,
especially when the dynamics are considered, provides means
for controlling the trustworthiness of the statements ob-
tained which cannot be supplied in any other way. The
form of the schedules necessarily corresponds to the con-
tents— ^from a simple list to the counting cards which I have
described in my statistical textbook and which serve ad-
mirably to simplify the work. The counting cards as a
whole relate to the farm, but the rubrics dealing with the
personnel and the activity of the individuals concerned are
easily distinguished. The canvass covers a considerable
period. As a rule a district is visited throughout an entire
summer; and in a province the investigation generally
lasts not less than two to three years; but the facts are
registered at fixed and uniform periods of time. The in-
terrogation is made at village meetings which serves to
expedite the work and allows one to take advantage of the
imitative instinct of those questioned and the mutual assist-
ance which those belonging to the village can give each other.
And what is more important, the method serves to reveal
RUSSIA 527
contradictory statements and thus is a material aid in getting
at the truth. In addition, an outside control is exercised
through a preliminary collection and appropriate use of a
variety of controlling and symptomatic material, from which
has been developed a uniform system of measures for induc-
ing a little intelligent population to make reliable statements
and detecting accidental as well as intentional deviations
from the truth.
The second essential part of the fundamental investiga-
tion is based on the community schedule. Its chief divisions
relate to the composition and qualitative characteristics of
landed property, the utilization of the soil and how it is
distributed, matters of tenantry, the technique of agriculture,
results of harvests, markets, condition of wages, the economics
and partly the technique of village industries, etc. Here
also the same wealth of detail is observable, but some of
the more important rubrics are separated from the general
contents and framed as special schedules. In regard to
form, the free textual description is more and more being
superseded by filling out prepared rubrics or even by under-
scoring. This, as already stated, I regard as one of the
shadow sides of the present development of the zemstvo
statistics.
At first the farm enumeration and the filling out of the
community schedules were exhaustive, and as a rule remain
so. Gradually it developed, however, that it was not neces-
sary to put certain of the questions contained in the commun-
ity schedule in every instance (for example, in regard to the
technique of agriculture or of an industry, prices, wages,
etc.) and that other questions (results of harvests, hay crops,
industrial profits, etc.) necessitated interrogating some but
not all of the peasants. Therefore, beside the exhaustive,
partial investigations were made in which the choice of the
persons to be questioned was left to the statistician but it
was often prescribed by fixed rules. For instance, it would
be ordered that every tenth or twentieth person taken in al-
phabetical or other mechanical order should be questioned.
528 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The resulting sample method of investigation, which in
pure if quite imperfect form was utilized by the writer in
Siberia during 1887 to 1890, has been employed to a much
greater extent and in a much completer form in the last
decades partly as an independent method and partly in
connection with exhaustive inquiries. The chief sponsors
of the sample method are A. Pjeschechonow (Kaluga) and
Grohmann (Wjatka, Pensa). The last mentioned has
successfully attempted its theoretical defence. In time the
monographic budget studies have also become a necessary
part of the basic investigations and have been taken advan-
tage of for land registration purposes. The extremely minute
schedule prepared by Stscherbina was carried into even
much greater detail which in my opinion exceeds reasonable
bounds. In budget studies the oral method of interrogation
is followed. Only very recently have efforts been made to
devise account books.
It is quite impossible to attempt even a superficial char-
acterization of the several hundred volumes resulting from
the tabular and textual treatment of the immense material
gathered by zemstvo statisticians. Suffice it to state that
they have made substantial contributions also to the method-
ology of tabulation.
The current zemstvo statistics have as their principal
object the periodic manifestations of the economic life:
crop prospects and crop results, prices, condition of wages,
etc. They deal, however, with the most miscellaneous mat-
ters of economic and cultural life of the different localities
and may claim special importance for the time they cover.
Most of the statistical offices perform a certain service by
way of disseminating information not only of a scientific-
statistical, but of a purely business nature. The prevailing
method of procedure in collecting the current zemstvo sta-
tistics is modeled on the American correspondent system.
Every office organizes a staff of correspondents consisting as
a rule of the more intelligent peasants or of the best in-
formed representatives of the village, to whom from time to
RUSSIA 529
time are sent schedules that they are to fill. Besides utiliz-
ing correspondents, it has been found that community district
officials, especially the supervisors and clerks of the villages,
are capable of presenting satisfactory material when the
program of investigation is not too complicated and sufficient
control is exercised. In recent times it has become habitual
to obtain statements from such officials in regard to popula-
tion, live stock, seeded areas, the gain from subsidiary in-
dustrial work, itinerant labor, etc.; and on the whole the
statements are sufficiently reliable for current purposes.
The so-called "expedition method" is also made to serve
the current statistics, although not on a very large scale,
and chiefly in order to instruct community and village offi-
cials in their schedule work and to control it. Duties of
this kind are in part performed by employees of the provincial
offices but for many places special district statisticians are
appointed, whose chief occupation is to organize and super-
vise current statistical undertakings.
The zemstvo statistics are not free from essential defects.
They vary extremely not only in respect to the nature of the
investigation but especially in treatment of the data and in
lack of comparability results, both as to matter and time.
The reason for this is partly to be sought in different ob-
jective conditions and practical needs of the zemstvos in
the various provinces, but also in the changing tendencies
of the zemstvo majorities, the encroachment of governmental
control, the frequent change of personnel which for the
greater part is due to the meddling of the state police or in
conflicts between the statisticians and the zemstvos. The
pith of the situation, however, is to be found in the immoder-
ate efforts of the statisticians to give expression to their
scientific individuality. Related to this is the fact that in
preparing and perfecting the plans and methods of investiga-
tion the progress made has been purely empirical. No
uniform tradition has resulted. Moreover, most of the
statisticians have lacked a scientific education and therefore
have not been sufficiently solicitous about homogeneity and
36
530 MEMORIAL VOLUME
comparability. From the same source spring many partial
defects of the individual investigations and publications, as
well as a "statistical redundancy" which distinguishes so
many of the statisticians. But the zemstvo statisticians
are conscious of the need of certain basic principles in their
work and of guarding against a lack of scientific aptitude.
Many attempts have been made to improve conditions.
Special acknowledgment must be made, for instance, of
the effort of the statistical section of the Moscow Bar As-
sociation in the eighties, presided over by Professor A. I.
Tschuprow, Sr. Later on the statistical commission of the
Free Economic Association of Petrograd undertook work
of a similar nature. Most recently the newly formed Mos-
cow Society for Social Science, named for A. I. Tschuprow,
has taken up the subject with great energy. Under the
auspices of these different organizations meetings of zem-
stvo statisticians have been held from time to time. Es-
pecially important was the one of 1887 which worked out a
minimal program for investigations. The sessions of the
statistical sections of the great Bussian Congress of Nature
Scientists, which has convened four times, are also to be
classed with the above-mentioned meetings. The reports of
all these gatherings contain a wealth of methodological mate-
rial which is chiefly of interest in the field of zemstvo statis-
tics. The sum total of what has been obtained is very
slight — the confusing variety of zemstvo statistics has rather
grown than diminished.
I shall not dwell on the practical utilization of the results
of the zemstvo statistics. But I must emphasize the quite
widely prevalent opinion, which I, too, share, that the zem-
stvo statistics have not been equal to the tasks set by the
zemstvos and later by the government. I include the agra-
rian political tasks which have moved the government, as
already mentioned, to undertake investigations in Asiatic
districts after the model of the zemstvo statistics; and it
must be so, as from their very nature tasks of this kind can-
not be solved in an objective statistical manner.
RUSSIA 531
In spite of all this, the services rendered by the zemstvo
statistics are to be rated very highly. From a statistical-
methodological and in general from a scientific point of view,
the zemstvo statistics have accomplished more than the
total official Russian statistical science. In investigation
as well as in treatment they have "broken new roads and
continue to do so; they have completed an enormous work
and have not remained in a petrified state; even today they
are at the point of further development" (Fortunatow).
A very special technique of enumeration has been devised
which at all points departs from the west European forms
and in many respects approach the American. Further-
more, a peculiar technique of tabulating the material has
been evolved. Much has also been done to refine and
strengthen the sample method and the monographic budget
investigations; and it may be definitely asserted that the
general statistical methodology cannot avoid taking ad-
vantage of the experiences gained in the Russian zemstvo
statistics. It is hardly necessary to state that just on
account of their peculiar methodology and the ideal spirit
which dominated the best of the zemstvo statisticians, they
have become an instrument for investigating and picturing
statistically the life of the Russian people such as is not
possessed by any other country in Europe.
VI. Future Development of Russian Statistics
"What should be and is likely to be the direction that the
Russian statistics, especially the administrative, will follow
in their further development? The writer has had little to
do with the problems of statistical organization and is not
specially interested in them. It seems quite clear to me that
the idea contained both in the first and second reform plans
developed by the Central Statistical Office of attaining uni-
formity or, according to the terminology of von Mayr, an
"actual centralization of the administrative statistics,"
is not the main issue. Such an idea was altogether in place,
for instance, at the time the German Imperial statistics
532 MEMORIAL VOLUME
were organized when the question was of creating something
out of nothing and no previous history had to be reckoned
with. In Russia this is not the case. At the center the
development had taken the direction of separate special
statistics, in many of which considerable progress has been
made, and the work has been done in a competent, in many
instances, even in a model manner. In the periphery a
network of statistical offices under the zemstvos has been
developed which have trained a numerous staff of experts and
attained great merit both in practical and methodological
respects. In contrast to this spontaneous development,
the Central Statistical Office in the Ministry of the Interior,
whose leader would make it in fact the statistical center, has
remained far behindhand, and it is very doubtful if during
any time within sight it will be capable of reaching the heights
of organization and science in keeping with such center and
of creating a local organization which in truth does not exist
today. Therefore it seems to me reasonable to allow the
development now going on to proceed without interference.
The Russian administrative statistics will reach their best
form if the separate departments continue to work in the
same way as now, with due guarantees, however, that they
respond to scientffic demands. So far as the central office is
■concerned, the interests of the branches of statistics entrusted
to it require that it does not remain in its present unhappy
condition. Perhaps it would be advisable to let it organize
and conduct not only population enumerations but very
large statistical operations technically of an analogous char-
acter, such as the agricultural and industrial enumerations.
In any case the material means of the central office should
be greatly increased and the composition of the scientific
personnel given attention. It is also absolutely necessary
to turn the advisory statistical councils into a "collegium"
in which scientific statistics should be preponderantly rep-
resented, so that the scientific elements will be looked after
not only in cumbersome plenary meetings but also in smaller
committees charged with preparatory and consulting work.
RUSSIA 533
It need hardly be said that both the plenary as well as the
smaller committees should be guaranteed complete independ-
ence from both advisory bodies in matters of organization.
No matter how happily the advisory authorities may be
constituted, a discussion of important points in statistical
organization and methodology or of plans for larger statistical
investigations in open meetings by representatives of sta-
tistical science and practice will not be superfluous. Prob-
ably in no other way can all the many different needs and the
totality of statistical experience come to the fore. The
local statistical service could perhaps be most happily or-
ganized through the mediation of the statistical oflBces of
the zemstvos and the municipalities which possess a trained
personnel and have the necessary experience and knowledge
of local conditions, and, furthermore, have the direct op-
portunity of establishing the necessary connections in large
circles of the population. But this can only be accomplished
successfully if the central oflfice does not assume a dominating
attitude toward the municipal and rural offices, but one
evincing desire for cooperation.
In order that the Russian statistics may make progress it
is necessary to provide a much larger group of statistically
trained persons than is to be found today. As we have al-
ready said, the zemstvo statistics suffer greatly for lack of
trained experts. The same is true in no small degree of the
administrative statistics; and it is very characteristic that
men from the zemstvo statistical offices have had such a
large part in the organization, chiefly reorganization, of so
many branches of official statistics and in statistical in-
vestigations undertaken at the instigation of the government.
The leaders of the Central Statistical Office have thought
to supply this need by establishing courses in statistics in
connection with the central office. In fact, one course was
established in 1904, and it is the purpose to transform it
into a statistical high school with a three years' course.
This idea has not met with any response among experts, and
the enabling legislation was rejected by the upper chamber.
534 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The writer holds to the opinion that the step taken by the
leaders of the Central Statistical OflBce is not a fortunate one.
As a rule it cannot be assumed that aptitude for or a leaning
towards statistics manifests itself in young people who have
just graduated from the lower schools and have in mind
entering upon academic studies. On the other hand, the
scientifically prepared statistician — one speaks of the rule
and not of shining exceptions — can most easily be trained
on the basis of a general, preferably a popular, academic pre-
paratory education. The statistical training and its con-
tinuation could therefore be better promoted on the one
hand by developing statistical instruction in universities
and other high schools where social science is taught, and
on the other hand through special statistical extension
courses for persons with academic training, which should
be organized for the benefit of practical statisticians. In
both these directions considerable progress has been made
in the latest years. Especially in regard to the statistical
instruction ia the high schools, we in Russia stand at the
beginniug of what seems to me an important development
of statistical seminaries which combine a very thorough
theoretical study with actual practice after the model of
the laboratories for natural science, and which are preparing
to function as statistical experimental stations.
SWEDEN
THE HISTORY AND ORGANIZATION OF SWEDISH
OFFICIAL STATISTICS
By Dr. Edvard Arosenius
First Actuary of the Central Statistical Bureau of Sweden
I. Early History
The statistics of population are the oldest among the
different branches of official Swedish statistics and indeed
the only one to which special official consideration was
given in the early days. Two sets of public acts provided
material available for population statistics. One was the
mantalslangderna, that is, lists of inhabitants made up for
taxation purposes. These lists reach far back into time and
contain, so far as they have been preserved, much inter-
esting information relating to the demographic and economic
history of Sweden; but they were too incomplete to provide
the sole basis of population statistics in the proper sense.
The second and more important set consisted of the parish
registers. That the earliest records of population had an
ecclesiastical origin is not characteristic of Sweden alone;
but it is peculiar that the Swedish statistics of popidation
to this very day for the greatest part are founded upon regis-
ters that are kept by the clergymen, albeit in their capacity
as officials of the state.
The oldest Swedish parish register containing demographic
data, which is known to be preserved, is that of Trinity
Church in Uppsala; it dates from the year 1608. During the
seventeenth century it appears gradually to have become a
more general custom among the congregations at least to
make records of those who were christened and married
until by the ecclesiastical law of 1686, which still in part
governs the Swedish church, it became generally obligatory
to keep certain parish registers. In accordance with this
law the pastor of each congregation was charged with
maintaining a complete list of its members; of bridal couples;
538 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of the children born, both the legitimate and the illegitimate,
giving the date and place of birth, the date of baptism as
well as the names of the parents; furthermore, a list of all
decedents who were buried in the parish cemetery; and,
finally, a list of all persons moving into or leaving the
parish. Unconsciously, this ecclesiastical legislation made
provision for some of the most important elements in the
statistics of population. It was some time, however, be-
fore it was seriously considered to utilize the entries in the
parish registers for state administrative purposes.
At the close of the "Great Northern War" (1700-1721),
the exhausted Sweden, which on top of the ravages of war
had been decimated by pestilence, was made to sense keenly
the deficiency in population. Then interest was awakened
to learn the exact size of the population and the changes it
was undergoing. As early as in 1728 an assessor in the Board
of Trade, Hokerstedt, who subsequently became a provincial
governor, proposed a general enumeration of the population.
This suggestion did not lead to any result. According to
his own account, it was to have been "considered like the
example of King David when he would count the people."
But a few years later the government gained a different con-
ception of the questions involved. On the recommendation
of the Riksdag, a royal message to the provincial governors
in 1735 required them prior to the assembling of each Riks-
dag to hand in a report to the government about the condi-
tion of the province especially in economic respects, and that
the reports should also account for "the increase or decrease
of the inhabitants." But these reports were too incomplete
and lacking in uniformity to serve as the basis of orderly
statistics.
The honor of having developed such a basis in Sweden
belongs primarily to three men — Benzelius, Elvius and
Wargentin. Erik Benzelius, bishop of Linkbping, and
later archbishop, at the outset had lists prepared for his own
diocese and by deaneries* showing the births and deaths
together with the excess of the former over the latter.
* A deanery usually comprised ten parishes.
SWEDEN
S39
Later on he brought about a regulation requiring all the
dioceses to establish such lists and transmit them to the
government. The entries were begun in 1721, or the year
in which peace was concluded. Lists of births and deaths
were also transmitted to the Board of Health which was
established at this time, but the notations seem to have left
much to be desired in the matter of accuracy.
Per Elvius (died in 1749), secretary of the Academy of
Science founded in 1739, was the first one who seriously
undertook to work out the lists of births and deaths; and
with these as a starting point he finally attempted to es-
timate the whole population as well as its distribution
according to age. The method of calculation he followed,
but never found opportunity to publish in the reports of the
Academy, is assumed to have been a modification of the one
worked out by the well-knoWn Hollander W. Kersseboom in
his investigations published in the year 1738. In spite of
the defects of the material, which Elvius did not hide from
himself nor from others, he seems to have come very close
to the facts in calculating the total population.
The memorial by Elvius concerning the extent of the pop-
ulation was, on behalf of the Academy, transmitted to the
Riksdag in 1746. At the same time General J. A. von
Lantinghausen, a highly educated man who formerly had
been in foreign service with opportimity to gain knowledge
of the inquiries into population conditions made abroad,
proposed the preparation of regular tabular records {tables
archive) for the whole country. Lantinghausen had paid
attention to the reports of the provincial governor to the
Riksdag, and justly found the accounts of population con-
tained in them to be unsatisfactory. He would therefore
introduce regular schedules to contain statements of births;
of existing and recently contracted marriages; of deaths,
distributed according to age, sex, as well as month of death;
and finally of the existing population, likewise distributed
according to age, sex and civil condition. Both these me-
morials, that of the Academy of Science and Lantinghausen's,
540 MEMORIAL VOLUME
occasioned quite protracted deliberations in the Riksdag.
In cooperation with the Academy of Science, a committee
of the Riksdag prepared a comprehensive bill for tabular
records which was approved by the king and became law
on February 3, 1748, which thus may be reckoned as the
birthday of the Swedish oflBcial statistics.
The principal ieatures of the new arrangement were as
follows : Three tables, for which printed forms were sent out,
should be prepared annually for each parish in the country.
The forms for tables I and II were, however, identical and
might, therefore, be considered as one table which, although
somewhat improperly, has commonly been called the mor-
tality table. To be sure, it did contain statements about the
mortality, but also in regard to the other factors in the move-
ment of the population. Table I, so-called, gave for each
month the number of children baptized, with specifications
of sex and the number of legitimate and the illegitimate; the
number buried, classified by sex; the number of marriages
contracted and the number dissolved by death. Further-
more, the table stated the number of still-births, but without
other distinction than that of sex; the number of plural
births; the age and sex of decedents over ninety years old, and
furnished some other notations. Table II contained the
number of decedents, classified by sex, age and cause of
death. In regard to age, the decedents were divided into five
age groups, from five to ninety years. Children under five
years were placed in three groups, namely, under one year,
one to three years, and three to five years. The decedents
over ninety years of age were combined into one group about
which, however, as stated above, some specifications were
made in the notes to table I. Although the age groups were well
thought out, the enumeration of "diseases and casualties"
contained in 33 different rubrics left much to be desired.
Table II gave the number and composition of the exist-
ing population. With regard to age, the population was
divided into the same groups as the decedents in table II.
The civil condition of the population was shown in four
SWEDEN 541
groups: a. The married; b. widowers and widows; c. the
unmarried over 15 years of age; and d. children under 15
years. There was also a division of the population into 61
groups according to "social class," with room to add more.
This classification corresponds most nearly to that by occu-
pation in modern statistics and was followed in part on ac-
count of the still flourishing class distinctions. Finally, the
table contained some other statements, most important
among which was the number of households.
In the municipalities the labor of preparing table III was
divided between the clergy and the magistracy, but for the
rest the work devolved wholly on the clergy. The tables
were transmitted by the congregations to the deans, each
of whom summarized them for his deanery. These sum-
mary tables were thereupon sent to the consistories which
were obliged to hand in condensed reports to the provincial
governors for that part of the diocese belonging to each
province (the division by diocese did not correspond to the
administrative division) ; and, lastly, the provincial govern-
ors sent a summary, each for his proviace, to the Kans-
likollegium (corresponding in modern administration to the
home department of the government). The officials were
exceedingly optimistic in regard to the labor of making up
the tables. Soon it became evident, however, that this view
was doomed to disappointment as the clergymen were un-
accustomed to the work and the schedules left room for
doubt and misunderstanding at several points. In fact, it
would perhaps have been more remarkable had the new
arrangement at once attained a perfect form than that it
showed itself to be suffering from certain defects. It is
really more to be wondered at that the originators of the
tabular records exhibited as clear a vision as they did.
The attempts at population statistics prior to 1721, which
are referred to above, although in part unsuccessful, doubt-
less served to prepare the field for the tabular records.
It was intended to prepare a so-called general summary
for the whole country from the tables received for the
542 MEMORIAL VOLUME
dififerent provinces. The task of making the first general
summary, that for the year 1749, was entrusted to the hanali
secretary E. Carleson, who received permission to call in as as-
sistants some of the members of the Academy of Science, and
among them the secretary, Per Wargentin. Aside from some
attempts in the classic past, this summary for the year 1749
may be regarded as the oldest census report in Europe.
Meanwhile there was strong discontent with the tabular
records among the clergy, particularly in regard to the pop-
ulation table ("table III")- This dissatisfaction was ex-
pressed in the Riksdag of 1752. But it did not lead to any
modifications except that the table in question which, in
common with the so-called mortality table, was to have ap-
peared annually, hereafter should only be prepared trien-
nially, and the government, moreover, promised further to
revise and clarify the schedule for it. For the purpose of
the proposed revision (which was not undertaken), and be-
cause the preparation of the general tables was found to pro-
ceed slowly, it became evident that a separate organ for
the work was needed. By a royal rescript of October 11,
1756, the committee which had charge of the work under
the auspices of the Kanslikollegium was made a permanent
commission. Thus several decades earlier than any other
country, Sweden had obtained a separate statistical au-
thority, albeit that its organization was very primitive and
the pecuniary means at its disposal exceedingly meager. So
far as the chairman of the commission and its members were
concerned, the work involved was an unpaid side issue;
only the secretary enjoyed a small compensation (about
equal to 143 dollars per annum) which nevertheless, on ac-
count of the falling monetary value, in reality amounted to
considerably more.
From the outset the information gained from the tabu-
lations was regarded as a deep secret of state — quite in keep-
ing with the current point of view of the times.
The inclination of Sweden to keep secret the result of the
researches in population statistics was intensified by the
SWEDEN 543
fact that the deficiency in population complained of revealed
a weakness in military as well as in other respects which one
was not disposed to bring to the close attention of the neigh-
bors. Gradually it was perceived, however, that the pur-
pose of the work in large part would be missed were its fruits
kept solely for official consumption.
The tabulating commission in its first report — it was not
issued until 1761 and contained general tables for the
eight years 1750-1757 — did not coufine itself to the pub-
lication of figures of population, but considered several
questions within the fields of general sanitation and political
economy, and pointed out the defects of the tables themselves
which it attributed to two causes : partly that the clergymen
and magistrates were unaccustomed to this kind of work,
and partly the general ignorance about its wide importance.
In order to counteract this ignorance, the commission re-
quested the right of publishing through the press "the
comments which could be drawn from the tables for the
individual and public good." The request was approved to
the extent that the commission was advised at the end of
each year to have such information incorporated in the re-
ports of the Academy of Science as might be "interesting
and serviceable to the public."
The authorship devolved chiefly upon one of the members
of the tabulating commission, Per Wargentin, of whom men-
tion has already been made. In 1749 he had succeeded
Elvius as the secretary of the Swedish Academy of Science,
had gained international fame as an astronomer, and main-
tained relations with the learned world both at home and
abroad. He became the one who, according to contempo-
rary conception, especially outside of Sweden and also in the
afterworld, stood out as the chief representative of the older
Swedish statistics. Already, prior to the establishment of
the tabulating commission, Wargentin had to some extent
raised the veil of secrecy which was supposed to shroud the
results of the tabular records by publishing an extensive
article in the proceedings of the Academy of Science under
544 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the title: "Notes on the Utility of Annual Statements of the
Births and Deaths in a Country," and in which he gave some
statistical information. In his eagerness for the publicity of
the tabular records, Wargentin had probably been influenced
by the first Swedish professor of political economy, A.
Berch of Uppsala, with whom he corresponded and who
earnestly impressed upon him that "tables are not intended
to be buried in archives."
On account of the above-mentioned resolution of the
government, the oldest 'printed Swedish publications are
chiefly to be sought in the proceedings of the Academy of
Science; while the reports to the government of the tabu-
lating commission were not printed. To the matters which,
according to the opinion of the government, should contin-
uously be withdrawn from the light of publicity belonged
the accounts about the population, but the movement of the
population might be made known. Wargentin persuaded
several persons to publish monographs about separate parts
of the country in the proceedings of the Academy. He was
also the one who above others promoted relations with
statisticians abroad, and he was himself an industrious
author. Unfortunately, in the above-mentioned discus-
sion of the "utility of annual statements of the births and
deaths" he made a mistake that injured his reputation.
For in this he compared Halley's well-known computation
of the mortality for Breslau with data in regard to the actual
age distribution of the decedents in Sweden, particularly
in Stockholm and in certain provinces. To be sure, he did
not completely overlook the age distribution of the dece-
dents of a certain generation or year on the one hand and
within a certain period of time on the other, but he seems to
have minimized its importance. In addition, he used the
expression "Halley's method" — whereby he apparently
referred to the way of calculating the population solely from
mortality lists — so that the readers understood it to mean
just such a mortality table as the one Wargentin established
by computing Halley's figures. In Wargentin's later works
SWEDEN 545
there is no further mention of any table according to Hal-
ley's method so-called, but the computations of the mortality
are made by comparing the decedents (the average number
for a specified period of years) and the actually existing pop-
ulation within different age classes. Wargentin has been
sharply attacked by several authors on account of the mis-
conception he caused, although in part innocently. Oppos-
ing these disadvantageous judgments, Hjelt {The Origin of
the Swedish Tabular Records) and EnestriJm (P. W. Wargen-
tin und die sogenannte Halleysche Methods), in Abhandlungen
zur Geschichte der Mathematik IX, have reduced Wargentin's
mistakes to reasonable proportions.
The credit for the scientific treatment of the earliest
Swedish statistics belongs unquestionably in the first place
to Wargentin, who, by his aptitude and wealth of knowledge
as well as by his position as secretary of the Academy of
Science, was best adapted for the task; but he probably had
no oflScial commission from the government in regard to it.*
Alongside of him may be mentioned two brothers, Edvard
Fredrik Runeberg and Ephraim Otto Runeberg; the former
was secretary of the tabulating commission from 1763 on.
A debt of gratitude is also due Carleson on account of the
energy with which he'advocated the tabular records before
the Riksdag; besides, he took active part in working out the
first reports. The combining of occupation with cause of
death — a matter in which the Swedish population statistics
were far in advance of most others — is attributed to the
physician Abraham Back. For the rest, all of the members
of the commission seem to have devoted as much attention
as might reasonably be asked in the case of an unpaid extra
task.f
*V. John in bis Oeachichte der Staiisiik seems to assume this.
fForeign authors sometimes refer to Linn€ as one of the supporters of the Svredish
tabular records. But the proceedings of the commission do not lend any color to
this view. In the many letters from Linn€ to Elvius and to Wargentin there is not
the slightest indication of interest in the tabular records and the work preparatory
to it. Linux's renown is great enough as it is, but the honor of being one of the
founders of the Swedish Statistics cannot properly be awarded him.
36
646 MEMORIAL VOLUME
On the establishment of the tabular records it had been
intended, as already stated, to revise the tables; but chiefly
for financial reasons the question was put aside, and such a
revision was first effected in the year 1773.
It had rightfully been discovered that the material for
tabulation had to pass through too many hands. In order
to overcome this the government prescribed that in the
tabular scheme only the ecclesiastical division of the
country should be followed, so that the summaries made for
each diocese should be sent directly to the tabulating com-
mission, while the summaries formerly compiled in the pro-
vincial administrations should be discontinued. Further-
more, it was ordained that the tables of population should
be prepared only once in five years instead of triennially.
Finally, new tabular forms were devised which differed
quite essentially from the old. All these reforms seem to
have been adopted at the request of the tabulating com-
mission. The data of occupation and the statements of
the causes of death were especially and decidedly improved.
The utility of the rubrics "baptized" and "buried" was of
course less than that of the rubrics "born" and "died"
since, as a matter of fact, the preceding notations indicated
the number of births and deaths. There were also data in
regard to those who had moved into and out of the parishes.
On the other hand, the changes which did not touch the
schedule, in other words, the compilation of the tables by
dioceses and the lapse of five years between the population
tables marked, one may say, a backward step, unhappily.
It is not to be wondered at that the clergy should wish that
so laborious a table as that relating to population might not
recur too frequently, and in modern states the interval be-
tween two census periods is perhaps rarely less than five
years, but in most of them (as at present in the case of
Sweden) ten years. In making comparisons with the pres-
ent Swedish statistics it should be remembered, however,
that it is now possible to give the numbers of the population
annually although without specification of occupation and
SWEDEN 547
the like. The usefulness of the tables for the provinces and
dioceses left much to be desired: partly the continuity and
comparability with the older figures were not preserved;
partly the division by diocese in our country (unlike that in
Norway, for instance) did not have the same significance as
the civil administrative division; finally the dioceses con-
tained larger areas than the provinces and, in consequence,
statistics compiled by dioceses did not furnish the same de-
tailed presentation as those compiled by provinces. The
members of the tabulating commission were not blind to
these diflBculties, but hoped that they might be counter-
balanced by greater exactness and freedom from mistakes
in the tables.
These expectations were not fulfilled, or at least only in a
very imperfect degree. The data came in slowly and were
frequently quite as defective as those of the previous pro-
vincial tables. To be sure, as the minutes that have been
preserved show, the commission resorted to warnings and
corrections; but its activity was hampered by lack of working
forces and money. The driving power of the commission,
Wargentin, died in 1783 after an illness of about one year.
Carleson had left already in 1767 and most of the early
participants followed in the next decade. The empty places
were not always filled at once, and during Wargentin's last
illness and until the year 1791 the commission and with it
the whole of the Swedish statistics seem to have been in a
state of complete dissolution.
At last the government turned its attention once more to
the tabular records which at the outset had been begun
with such confidence and latterly so neglected. In 1790
several new members were appointed to the tabulating com-
mission who commenced their activity the following year.
Most important was the selection of a secretary; and for this
post was chosen the astronomer Henrik Nicander, a man of
unusual energy. Through his zealous and unselfish work
the tabulating commission was again put on its feet. The
government was induced to order that the so-called deanery
548 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tables should be transmitted to the tabulating commission.
By this means the commission was enabled once more to
prepare tables for the diflPerent provinces. This change was
a step toward centralization of the tabular work. To be
sure, the central compiling authority did not receive the
primary material as is customary in present-day statistical
work, but still a half -prepared material which stood closer to
the primary than the summary tables with which the tabu-
lating commission hitherto had been obliged to content itself.
Meanwhile, just on this account the work of the commission
increased manifold; and in order that it might be able to dis-
charge it, the commission was at last granted a larger appro-
priation. Soon other improvements were carried out. In
the new schedules prepared in 1802 the statistics of mar-
riages, which hitherto had been neglected, were developed
among other things; data of the population in each parish
were to be entered in the deanery table, and a sharp distinc-
tion was made between urban and rural places. In a
country like Sweden, with its scattered population and in
consequence showing a marked difference in occupation and
conditions of population as between city and country which
has almost continued to our times, the last-mentioned im-
provement has had a statistical importance which it may be
difficult to imagine in densely populated countries. Aside
from all the improvements in population statistics, it is to be
remarked about the schedules of 1802 that the annual tables
also contained information about the seeding and harvest
of the most important cereals and vegetables cultivated
and that the population tables — which, as stated, were to
be sent in every five years — were to give the approximate
numbers of horses, cattle and sheep, the approximate area
under cultivation and a couple of other facts about agri-
culture. At the same time the provincial governors were ad-
vised to account for the increase and decrease in agricul-
ture, live-stock and other means of subsistence and the causes
of the same in their quinquennial reports. These reports
SWEDEN fi49
were to be sent to the Kammarkollegium* which in turn
should send them to the king, accompanied by an account
of the economic condition of the country to be based upon
the reports for the provinces as well as upon those of the
clergy (incorporated in the tabular records). Thus the
beginning was made toward statistics of agriculture and in-
dustry. Although the schedule expressly stated that the
data of agriculture were only to be approximated and did
not require special inquiry, toward which the general public
especially at that time entertained great suspicion, the clergy
were much dissatisfied on account of the new information
demanded from them and sought once more to get rid of
the duty. In this they succeeded, and the data appear for
the last time in the tables of 1820. Subsequently the sta-
tistics of agriculture were for a long time confined chiefly to
reports of the provincial governments referred to above,
although the trustworthiness of their statements concern-
ing agriculture were frequently challenged.!
From 1802 and until the middle of the nineteenth century
the tabular records did not undergo any special modifications,
nor was the organization of the commission changed. It
deserves to be mentioned, however, that beginning with 1811
the reports of the tabulating commission were printed.
Some expansion of the statistics also occurred. Thus to
the statistics of marriages were added statements of the ages
of the contracting parties; and the table of population was
enriched partly by several data that to some extent compen-
sated for the lack of real statistics of industry, and partly
by information about the size and economic condition of
the households.
Beginning with 1825 information of the same kind was
also sought in regard to foreign subjects. But a deteriora-
*The old treasury, later made an office for land, revenue, etc.
fin one of his studies of the older conditions of Sweden, G. SundbSrg has ez-
preased the opinion that so long as the data of agricultural statistics were collected
by the clergy, they were, even if defective, nevertheless better than those collected
later on by other officials on behalf of the provindal governments.
650 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tion of the mortality statistics is to be noted, for at their
request the clergymen were exempted from the duty of
stating the causes of death except in cases of persons dying
from violence. Thereby the continuity of the series of
data of causes of death which had existed for eighty years —
1750 to 1830 — and which at the time had no counterpart,
was broken. The value of these data had been essentially
diminished by the fact that they were furnished not by
physicians but by the clergy. Yet, the rural clergy of the
olden time stood in intimate relation with the worldly affairs
of their flocks and were sometimes obliged to act the part
of physicians among the sparse population; moreover, the
clergymen of the period of 1700 were frequently in the pos-
session of medical knowledge.*
Sweden did not attain complete statistics of causes of death
relating to the entire mortality of the country until 1911.
In regard to a minority of causes of death, viz., suicide,
murder, accidents, epidemics, deaths by childbirth and
through the abuse of intoxicants, it was possible for the
tabulating commission and its successor, the Central Statis-
tical Bureau, to prepare more or less complete statistics for
the years 1831 to 1910, but the causes of death in question
constitute only one tenth of the whole number. For the
municipalities, tables of causes of death are at hand which
are based upon data from the boards of health and pub-
lished by the Medical Department for each year, beginning
with 1875 (and for separate earlier years).
We now proceed to a brief survey of the most important
demographic data collected in the old tabular records :
For the time beginning with 1749, an annual statement for
the entire country and for each province (for the years 1774
to 1791 for each diocese) of the number of living births,
distributed according to sex, legitimacy and illegitimacy and
month of birth;
The number of still-births (but with a break for the years
*In regard to these ancient data of causes of death, see, among others. La lutte
coriire la tuberculose en SvMe. Uppsala, 1905.
SWEDEN 551
1802-1810) and with the reservation that the data cannot
be considered as completely trustworthy before the year
1831 ; the number of plural births ;
Number of marriages each month;
Number of deaths distributed partly according to age and
sex and partly according to civil status, and finally partly
according to month of death; the number of marriages dis-
solved by death;
After 1775 : age of mothers bearing children in five-year
groups;
After 1802: marriages contracted among single persons,
among widowers, widows and single persons, and between
the widowed; the number of illegitimate children dying
during the first year of their life;
Beginning with the year 1804: the number of persons
vaccinated;
Beginning with the year 1821 : marriages distributed ac-
cording to the first, second, third and subsequent marriages;
the number of immigrants and emigrants;
Beginning with 1831, the number of still-births legitimately
and illegitimately bom during each month; the marriages
contracted and dissolved through death in combination with
the sequence of the marriage (1st, 2d, 3d, etc.), and the
age of the persons in question; the economic condition of
mothers bearing children; the number of legitimate and
illegitimate children.
Data were also collected in regard to the population, first
annually (1749 to 1751), then from 1754 to 1772 every third
year, and beginning with 1775 every fifth year, with dis-
tribution according to sex, age in five-year groups, and civil
status; and finally according to occupation, but following
a scheme which was changed several times so far as occupa-
tion was concerned. Beginning with 1805 population data
were gathered for each commune. At the same period of
time information was obtained in regard to the size of the
households and of the number of Laplanders in the northern
parts of the country.
552 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Aside from all this, the summary of the tabular record
contained chronological data which later on were discon-
tinued, as mentioned above; foremost among them were
agricultural data and a long series of statements of causes
of death.
II. Later Development and Publications
While the Swedish population statistics after the reforms
in the first part of 1800 remained practically unchanged for
half a century, with the exception of single improvements in
details, there gradually! grew up new branches of statistics.
It has already been mentioned that to the details trans-
mitted to the tabulating commission there had been added
some information about agriculture, but that later on it was
discontinued. The Academy of Agriculture, which was
founded in 1811, made some attempts to provide statistics
of agriculture through the agricultural societies (economic
associations established in the provinces, at the outset only
scattered ones but which subsequently obtained state sub-
sidies in return for the performance of certain tasks); but
these attempts yielded unsatisfactory results. During a
long period of years the data contained in the quinquennial
reports of the provincial governments were the only Swedish
statistics of agriculture.
In regard to mining — an industry which early gained the
favorable attention of the Swedish government — there exist
some official reports to the Riksdag from the year 1700,
but they were discontinued. After a long intermission
they were recommenced in 1833, made annual and printed.
They were published by an office called the Board of Min-
ing which in 1857 was consolidated with the Board of
Trade. Beginning with the year 1830, the last-mentioned
department published an annual report of manufactures,
and from about the same period reports dealing in part
with "foreign commerce and shipping" and partly "domes-
tic shipping and commerce."
The Medical Board began the publication of official
reports of hospitals, the first for the year 1851.
SWEDEN 553
Aside from all this, several departments, for example the
general post oflSce, issued reports of their administrations
which contained some statistics; but these publications
were for the greater part quite inaccessible to the general
public and diflScult to utilize on account of the method of
presentation followed. In general, it may be said of the
Swedish statistics at the beginning of 1850 that, with the ex-
ception of the population statistics which were controlled
by a separate scientifically trained institution, they were
wholly without plan, behind the times and neglected. The
need of better statistics had long been recognized and to
meet it the government appointed a committee which re-
ported its findings in 1856. The chief points in its recom-
mendations were as follows:
The existing tabulating commission should be transformed
into a statistical department that, in addition to population
statistics, should care for those branches of statistics which
ought to be but so far had not constituted subjects of official
work on the part of any central administrative department.
On the other hand, departments which were publishing sta-
tistical reports should continue to do so. The desirable
uniformity and unity between the different branches of
statistics should be obtained through an advisory commis-
sion after the model of the one organized in Belgium by the
renowned Quetelet. Nominative excerpts from the parish
registers in each parish should take the place of the old
deanery tables.
The proposition was sanctioned in its main features and
became operative in the year 1858. From this time on
Sweden had the following organs for official statistics:
(a) An advisory commission called the statistical prepara-
tory commission, consisting of the civil minister as chairman,
the chief of the statistical department as permanent leader,
and seven other members who for the greater part were
higher officials; (b) A department called the Central Bu-
reau of Statistics with the duty of preparing, in the first
place, the population statistics and in addition other branches
554 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of statistics; (c) A number of departments whose chief
activities lay in other directions but which pubHshed statis-
tical reports. The most important of these departments
was the Board of Trade which issued four such reports,
viz., in regard to mining, manufactures, inland navigation
and commerce, and foreign navigation and commerce.
Formerly the statistical preparatory commission and the
Central Bureau of Statistics constituted one authority, the
statistical tabulating commission which was regarded as
made up of two divisions, — one advisory and one for statis-
tical work.
On the suggestion of the statistical preparatory commis-
sion, it was resolved that all statistical reports were , to be
published uniformly under the common title "Contribu-
tions to the OflBcial Statistics of Sweden," under separate
litterae for each subject or group of subjects. Besides, the
Central Bureau of Statistics published a statistical journal
containing propositions or governmental decisions in regard
to official statistical investigations, general summaries of the
large official reports, statistical monographs on special
subjects and briefer statistical communications from foreign
countries. From 1871 until the discontinuance of the jour-
nal, the first number of each volume — usually containing
three numbers — was devoted to a summary of all the official
statistics corresponding to the statistical year books of
other countries. One number contained data relative to
the savings banks until the savings banks statistics were
given a place in the great series. During a period of years,
from 1895 until 1903 inclusive, one number was annually
given over to international statistical surveys prepared by
G. Sundbarg, until it was found that they were too extensive
to appear within the frame of a journal, whereupon they were
issued in French as an independent work under the title
Apergus statistiques internationaux. Supplements to the jour-
nal were issued occasionally and contained, for instance, an
administrative statistical "Description of Sweden in 1571,"
by H. Forsell, which was based upon old taxation lists, and
SWEDEN 555
the like. In another supplement, J. Hellstenius published
his lectures on comparative population statistics, the most
important demographic work issued in the Swedish language
prior to the works of Sundbarg.
The reforms of 1858 constituted at least the framework
of that organization of Swedish official statistics which in its
principal features is in force at the present day.
It remains to say a few words about the development
which these statistics have imdergone since that time.
When, in 1850, the above-mentioned committee prepared
its suggestions, there was no lack of voices advocating a
strong centralization of statistics, that is to say, that if not
all at least most of the important branches of the official
statistics should be placed under a single department. The
most active member of the committee, F. Th. Berg, who
became the first chief of the Central Statistical Bureau,
held, however, to the opinion that the model which ought to
be followed was the Belgian organization which postulated a
division of statistical work among diflFerent administrative
branches, but having a central commission as the cohesive
power. And, as already mentioned, the suggestion of the
committee was that the administrative departments al-
ready publishing statistical statements should continue to do
so, but that new branches of official statistics, which it was
expected would be taken up, should be placed under the new
department, the Central Statistical Bureau. In the mean-
while, the development did not take the direction which the
committee and, as it appears also, the government had antici-
pated at the time the propositions of the committee were
brought before it.
The series "Contributions to the Official Statistics of
Sweden," which at the outset only embraced seven branches,
was quickly increased by new ones. One of the first new
lUtera added was that relating to the quinquennial reports of
the provincial governments which were incorporated in the
series in such manner that, although the reports continued to
be prepared in the offices of the provincial governors, they
556 MEMORIAL VOLUME
were transmitted to the Central Statistical Bureau to be
printed under its auspices with the addition of such statistical
data as had become accessible at the time for printing.
Thereupon the statistical bureau made a summary on the
basis of the reports and other sources of information, dealing
with the development of the whole coimtry in economic and
other respects during the five-year period in question. This
series of quinquennial reports covered the years 1856-1860
to 1901-1905 inclusive. As the authors of the provincial
reports are so many — the Swedish provinces including the
city of Stockholm numbered no less than 25 — and within
certain limits had great latitude in preparing their reports as
they thought best, it is easy to understand that these reports
formed quite a motley collection. Beyond those prepared in
a careless fashion, there were others whose value as a source
of knowledge of the province in question was hardly exceeded
by any other official or private publication. Besides these
quinquennial reports, the following additional branches of
statistics were undertaken by the Central Statistical Bureau :
Agriculture and live-stock, general elections, poor relief and
finances of the communes, statistics of salaries and pensions
in public administration, and private savings banks.
Meanwhile the branches of statistics entrusted to other
departments were far more nimierous. At the end of the
nineteenth century the series "Contributions to the Official
Statistics of Sweden" had grown from 7 to 23 litterae, as
follows :
(a) Population and vital statistics; beginning with 1851
(b) Judicial statistics, beginning with 1857
(c) Mining, beginning with 1858
(d) Manufactures and trades, beginning with 1858
(e) Internal shipping and commerce, beginning with 1858;
beginning with 1895 changed to navigation
(f ) Foreign commerce and shipping, beginning with 1858,
and after 1895 changed to commerce
(g) Prisons, beginning with 1859
SWEDEN 657
(h) Quinquennial reports of the Governors, beginning with
1856-60
(i) Telegraphs, beginning with 1861
(k) Hygiene and hospitals, beginning with 1861
(1) State railways, beginning with 1862
(m) Post, beginning with 1864
(n) Agriculture and live-stock, beginning with 1865
(o) Land surveys, beginning with 1867
(p) Public education, beginning with 1868
(q) Crown lands and state domains, beginning with 1870
(r) Elections, beginning with 1871
(s) Public works, beginning with 1872
(t) Pilots and lighthouses, beginning with 1873
(u) Local government, poor relief and finance, beginning
with 1874
(v) Spirits, beet sugar and malt liquors, beginning with
1873-74
(x) Salaries and pensions, beginning with 1881
(y) Savings banks, beginning with 1893
As a matter of fact, the statistical reports exceeded twenty
three, as certain litterae included several reports, for instance,
litt. (y) statistics of savings banks, which embraced partly the
reports of private banks published by the Central Bureau of
Statistics and partly reports of the postal savings banks
which were issued by the department in charge of them.
Aside from this, there have gradually come into being numer-
ous periodical statistical reports that were not incorporated
in the series under consideration. Some of these reports
were published as supplements to the official postal journal;
and the most important of them were some summaries relat-
ing to taxation and the finances of the state. Monthly
reports of the Bank of Sweden and of private banks were
published in the same manner; likewise, annual reports for
the mortgage institutions. Then there were certain in-
dependent publications, among which may be mentioned
the reports on insurance by a public inspector (later on by
558 MEMORIAL VOLUME
one of the departments of the state); the statistics of the
general staflF of the army in regard to persons liable to
military duty, and reports of the sanitation and hospitals
in the army and navy.
As the new century approached, a very important branch
of statistics was added which soon grew into a large series of
publications, viz., labor statistics. These new statistics, for
which preparation had been made through a couple of com-
mittee reports and a number of privately undertaken in-
vestigations, were given a place in the state administration
in the year 1897. To begin with, several experimental works
were undertaken under the auspices of the Board of Trade.
Beginning with 1903, the work attained a more fixed or-
ganization as a separate branch for labor statistics within the
Board of Trade. As the data in regard to labor grew this,
division was gradually expanded and in 1912 made an in-
dependent department called the Department for Social
Affairs, whose field of activity did not include social statistics
only but also mediation in labor disputes, sickness insurance,
the protection of labor and preparations for social legislation.
This department is aided by a social council divided into
several sections, of which the section for labor statistics
counts five members, viz., two employers, two employees,
and one outsider.
Thus a large and variegated collection of departments had
become charged with the duty of preparing the official
Swedish statistics; one could count at least 20 central
authorities, all of which, with the exception of the Central
Statistical Bureau, had statistics as a secondary duty beside
its principal activity. This marked decentralization did not
follow from a preconceived plan but was due to the very
manner in which the statistics had grown up. Meanwhile,
certain disadvantages made themselves felt on account of
this division of work, the more so as the uniting bond, which
it was intended should be formed by the advisory commission,,
could hardly be saidjto function in a satisfactory manner.
The commission in question had been changed in 1886, both
SWEDEN 559
as to name and composition. The name Statistical Tabulat-
ing Commission as a general designation of the statistical
council and of the Central Statistical Bureau, was abolished
(both of these institutions had hardly formed a unity except
as to name), and the advisory authority alone was given
the name of the Statistical Tabulating Commission with the
chief of the Central Statistical Bureau as its chairman; and
as members of it sat a representative from each of the depart-
ments which participated in the publication of -the series
"Contributions to the Official Statistics of Sweden." At
the outset the commission counted a total of fourteen mem-
bers ; later on the number was somewhat increased. Neither
the chairman of the commission nor the members or secreta-
ries enjoyed any special compensation for their work as such.
According to what one might have expected, the change
in organization should have brought to the commission
greater expert help, but in many instances its members con-
sisted of officials who were occupied with statistical affairs
within their departments in a purely formal manner, while
the actual leaders of the statistical work in the administra-
tive service did not have seats in the commission. No more
did the exponents of the statistics which had grown up out-
side of the great series (for example, labor statistics, the
reports of bank inspection) have any place in the commission.
It is, furthermore, to be remarked that the commission was
an institution with too many heads and too unwieldy.
While the preparation of statistical work during the first
years indicated no little initiative when the question was of
organizing new branches of the official statistics, the ensuing
activity of the Statistical Tabulating Commission was hardly
intensive.
Criticism of the official statistics was heard even within
the Riksdag. In a report to the king, the Riksdag stated
that the organization of 1858 which aimed at uniform leader-
ship had been too largely set aside in the subsequent develop-
ment of the official statistics.
Reference was also made to the disadvantage of statistical
560 MEMORIAL VOLUME
work being undertaken by non-professionals. Concerning
the measures which should be adopted to remedy the defects,
the most far-reaching suggested was that, with certain ex-
ceptions such as of post, telephone and railway statistics,
the diflferent branches of the official statistics should be
united under a single department, an expanded Central
Bureau of Statistics. In this manner it was hoped to attain
the important object of affording statistical expertness full
play. Aside from this way out of the difficulty, another of
less importance, but not wholly to be overlooked, might be
conceived, viz., to work toward a more effective cooperation
between the different branches of statistics and secure more
expert leadership in them while retaining the existing out-
ward distribution of the statistics of the country. It was
hoped to accomplish this by giving the Statistical Tabulating
Commission a different composition and in connection there-
with entrusting it with the publication of a statistical year
book and perhaps of other surveys.
The communication from the Riksdag thus pointed out
two alternatives, the one of having a fairly marked centraliz-
ation of statistics, and the other of doing without it. As a
matter of fact, within the political circles of Sweden as well
as within those of professional statisticians, the opinions
have been sharply divided on the question of centralization
versus decentralization.
In the meantime, the government, actuated by the com-
munication from the Riksdag mentioned above, charged a
committee with the duty of preparing a statement and pro-
posals to secure the greatest possible uniformity within
the official statistics of the country, a regular plan of publi-
cation and a speedier appearance of the reports. The com-
mittee gave its final opinion in 1910 after having subjected
the different branches of official statistics to searching in-
vestigation. In the matter of organization, the committee
proposed, among other things, that the tabulating commis-
sion should disband and be supplanted by a statistical com-
mission composed partly of the chiefs of the most important
SWEDEN 561
statistical oflBces or divisions, and partly of university
teachers, representatives of business, etc.; that a central
statistical oflBce should be given charge of some of the new
branches of statistics which the committee proposed to es-
tablish as well as of the judicial, educational, and business
statistics in the widest sense of the term (including manu-
factures, mines, commerce and navigation). The central
statistical oflSce should, furthermore, have the duty of
supervising the uniformity and regularity of planning within
the entire field of oflficial statistics. The proposition thus
contained a quite inclusive if not an extreme centralization
of statistics. Labor statistics, statistics of posts, telegraphs,
railways, prisons, and all branches of the official statistics
actually constituting reports of work, such as surveys of
lands, pilotage, and the like, should remain outside the
central office. Beyond this, the committee proposed numer-
ous improvements in the different reports: the utilization
of a smaller and more easily handled size of publications and
the arrangement of all official statistics except of the statisti-
cal year book in two series to be called the Official Statistics
of Sweden and Statistical Communications. The proposals
of the committee affecting organization have so far not led
to any other results than the transfer of the official statistics
to the Central Statistical Bureau. On the other hand, the
ideas relative to the contents and form of statistical publica-
tions have in large measure been realized.
III. Present Organization
For the present the Swedish statistics are organized in the
manner described below. The labor is divided between many
different departments of which only one, namely, the Central
Statistical Bureau, has statistics as its principal object. This
bureau publishes a statistical year book and reports in the
following branches of statistics : The condition of population,
including enumerations of population; annual statements of
population within administrative domains, the movement
of population, emigration and immigration, and the causes of
37
562 MEMORIAL VOLUME
death; the general statistics of savings banks; agriculture
and live-stock; general elections (to the Riksdag and Lands-
ting); judicial statistics; poor relief; finances; charitable
institutions. Furthermore, the Central Bureau is to pre-
pare quinquennial reports on the development of the country
(in the place of the earlier quinquennial reports of the pro-
vincial governments which now [are given up), statistics of
fisheries and some other minor studies which have not yet
been undertaken. In addition to this, the Central Bureau
has since olden times had the duty partly of preserving in its
archives the extracts from the parish registers which, begin-
ning with the year 1860, form a connected material providing
knowledge of the population and the changes within it, and
to a large extent is utilized by the authorities and private
persons for inquiries of a judicial, genealogical and scientific
character; partly to maintain a statistical library which now
contains something more than 45,000 volumes.
Among the other offices that publish statistics, the Board
of Trade and the Department for Social Affairs are the most
important. The first mentioned issues publications of com-
merce (partly monthly reports, partly annual statements),
of navigation, industry and mining, all annually, as well as
separate inquiries regarding specially selected industries.
This office also maintains a register of industries.
The Department for Social Affairs publishes the social
statistics largely in the form of special investigations. The
more regularly undertaken investigations have dealt with the
supply of labor, etc., in agriculture, collective bargaining,
strikes and lockouts, cooperative undertakings, the prices
of the necessaries of life and rents; public labor mediation,
the registered sickness associations and accidents in industry.
Several of the statistical publications issued by other
offices than the ones mentioned have the character quite as
much of administrative reports as of statistical statements.
In general, each office contributes only one publication to the
series Official Statistics of Sweden. Exceptions are the
Medical Department which publishes a report in regard to
SWEDEN 563
general sanitation and hospitals and another in regard to
hospitals for the insane; the Railway Department which
publishes a detailed report of the state railways, general
railway statistics including both the private and the state
railways, and usually appearing later than the first-mentioned
report; besides this, monthly reports (see below); and the
statistical division of the Ecclesiastical Department which
publishes one report of the common schools and one of the
higher education. The Statistical Tabulating Commission
continues to function as the uniting bond between all these
offices. Expert knowledge is more thoroughly represented in
the commission than before, inasmuch as the previously
independent branches of statistics have been incorporated in
the series "Official Statistics of Sweden." Thus, for exam-
ple, representatives of the Department for Social Affairs and
of the Insurance Department have seats in the commission.
But as yet the question of remodelling the commission cannot
be said to have been solved.
Chairs in statistics have been established in both of the
State Universities, at Uppsala and Lund, for the purpose of
scientific statistical study, and in order to train competent
statisticians. The Free High School in Stockholm also has
a teacher of statistics.
The material for the official Swedish statistics is obtained
in part through the administrative work itself (for in-
stance, the statistics relating to the means of communica-
tion in the state). Local agents are largely employed to
secure labor statistics. For other branches of statistics, the
material is usually obtained through corporations or private
individuals (for example, manufacturers, ship owners, mer-
chants, savings banks, etc.), who are required to transmit
data to the respective offices according to a fixed schedule.
In all this, the Swedish organization corresponds to that
found in most other countries, but it is peculiar to Sweden
that the primary material for the population statistics
continues for the very greatest part to be supplied by the
clergy in form of extracts from the parish registers. This
564 MEMORIAL VOLUME
arrangement is utilized not only for the statistics of the
movement of population but also for the enumerations of
population occurring every tenth year.
This system has seemed singular, even primitive, to some
foreign investigators, and has given rise here and there to
doubt concerning the trustworthiness of the Swedish statis-
tics. So far as the annual population statistics are concerned
one who has had opportunity to compare the Swedish mate-
rial with the corresponding for other countries standing on
the same level with Sweden, cannot for one moment doubt
the desirability of retaining the Swedish system. In
regard to its usefulness in enumerations of population, argu-
ments for and against can be adduced. The advantages of
the extracts from the population register are greater re-
liability of the data in several respects, for instance, as to
age, and the close union between the data of the population
enumeration in regard to the existing population and the
annual data of the movement of population. When this sys-
tem is compared with one requiring special enumerators,
the Swedish arrangement has above all things the dis-
advantage that the returns of occupation become less exact;
but such returns are never wholly satisfying in a general
enumeration of population according to the continental
model or except when a special occupation census is taken.
In the same manner, the statements in regard to the dis-
tribution of population according to households may become
a little less reliable under the Swedish system. It is also to
be noted that the interest which can be awakened by a per-
sonal participation in furnishing census facts is to a large
extent lacking under the Swedish system. The last-men-
tioned disadvantage cannot, however, be regarded as of
much importance. Owing to the present-day mobility of
population, it is unquestionably difficult to keep up a
reliable registration. But quite a good deal has been done
to perfect it, and the only European countries which in this
respect possibly may surpass Sweden are the Netherlands
and Belgium. In regard to the cost of the state office,
SWEDEN 565
the Swedish method stands alone, as the material both for
population enumerations and for the annual movement of
population is provided gratis by the clergymen.
The various publications in the field of Swedish oflScial
statistics appear below. The old series Contributions to the
Official Statistics of Sweden (in quarto) has gradually and
for the greater part been discontinued. At present only
poor relief and finances of the communes continue to appear
in it. The new series, in octavo, with much changed con-
tents takes its place.
The Official Statistics of Sweden contain the following
divisions and, in contradistinction to the reports of the old
series, are not designated by letters :
Population, including, in addition to enumerations of
populations which occur only every tenth year, four
different annual reports (see above)
General Hygiene and Hospitals; Hospitals for the Insane;
Hygiene and Hospitals in the Army; Hygiene and Hos-
pitals in the Navy
Land Surveys
Agriculture and Live-stock
Forestry
Manufactures
Mines
Commerce
Navigation
Pilot Service
Public Roads and Waterways
State Railways
General Railway Statistics
Posts
Telephones and Telegraphs
Postal Savings Banks
Private Savings Banks
State Insurance Office
566 MEMORIAL VOLUME
State Insurance Companies
Social Statistics (including numerous different reports;
those appearing annually have been previously men-
tioned)
Prisons
Education
Elections to the Riksdag
Elections to the County Councils
Industries Subject to Special Taxation (manufacture of
spirits, beer and sugar)
A series called Statistical Communications, which is in-
tended to contain partly shorter and partly more professional
reports, is divided into a sub-series :
(a) Incidental Statistical Investigations
(b) (Has not yet been determined)
(c) Monthly statistics of commerce
(d) Railway statistics (monthly)
(e) Informaiion about banks (monthly)
(f ) Social communications (monthly)
Outside of this series stands the Statistical Year Book for
Sweden {Annuaire Statistique de la SuSde), which is pub-
lished by the Central Statistical Bureau and contains rubrics
in the Swedish and French languages.
It is intended that some of the data formerly incorporated
in the quinquennial reports of the provincial governments
are now to become independent publications as part of the
official Swedish statistics, namely, those relating to highways
and posting stations, real property and benevolent institu-
tions. No reports of this kind have so far appeared, but
information in regard to the posting stations for the years
1906-1910 have been published in the Statistical Journal.
The quinquennial survey of the development of the country,
which should supplant the summaries of the earlier reports
of the provincial governments by the Central Statistical
Bureau, has not yet been brought about because the forces
at the disposal of official statistics are too occupied with
SWEDEN 567
Other matters, and because a survey of this kind has for the
present been made superfluous through the Historical
Statistical Handbooks which of late have been published by
aid of state subsidies. The first of these handbooks was
decided upon in 1898, and its preparation given to the
Central Statistical Bureau, which in turn entrusted the edit-
ing of the book to Gustav Sundbarg, who at that time was the
Division Chief in the Bureau and later became Professor.
The work, entitled La SuSde, was published in France
in 1900, at the time of the World Exposition at Paris. It
was followed by a Swedish edition in 1901 and an English
edition in 1904 at the time of the exposition at St. Louis.
As these publications were in great demand and the editions
became exhausted, and because of the rapid development of
the present time in many domains, a work of this kind soon
becomes antiquated, and preparation for a new edition was
made, to be prepared by J. Guinchard, Chief of the Statis-
tical Bureau of the City of Stockholm. The first edition of
this appeared in Stockholm in 1914 at the so-called Baltic
Exposition at Malm6. It was followed by an English edition
in 1915 at the time of the Panama-Pacific International Expo-
sition at San Francisco. The Swedish edition is soon to
appear.
Of the earlier publications, that known as the Statistical
Journal has been discontinued. Its first number, which reg-
ularly contained a summary of the oflScial Swedish statis-
tics, has been replaced by the above-mentioned Year Book,
while for the rest the journal may be regarded as having
been supplanted by the series relating to incidental statis-
tical investigations.
According to the arrangement of the new statistical series
some general Swedish statistics are to remain outside of
it, for instance, the Year Book of the Bank of Sweden and
the monthly reports about it and the private business banks.
Of course, the entire communal statistics are outside of
the series in question and the whole organization.
Of communal statistical offices there is in Sweden in real-
568 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ity only one, namely, in the capital, Stockholm. It was
established in 1905; but already since 1868 there had been
published a Statistical Year Book for Stockholm, which was
edited by a mimicipal official. The Statistical Office has
now assumed charge of this year book which has been en-
larged. The same office also publishes, partly alone, partly
in conjunction with other communal authorities, several
other statistical works relating to Stockholm. They are
given here under their French titles. The statistics of the
office are contained under Swedish and French rubrics :
Administration; Hygiene; Assistance publique; Construc-
tions et habitations; Statistique mensuelle {containing divorce
matters); Statistique hebdomadaire {chiefly demography and
hygiene); Service d'incendie et d' ambulance; Placement;
EnquMes spSciales; Commerce et navigation; Fabriques
et mStiers; Nettoyage; Elections.
Besides, the office has issued communal calendars and
constitutional collections. As already indicated, the ac-
tivity of the office has gradually been expanded to matters
beyond those of a purely statistical character.
In Gothenberg, a committee appointed by the magistracy
has charge of the publication of the Statistical Year Book
(beginning with the year 1900); and in Malmo a Year Book
has been prepared in the same manner, the first volume of
which is for the year 1913.
APPENDIX
Sources of Information and Literature.
Report of the earlier Statistical Committee, Stockholm, 18S6, and of the later Statis-
tical Committee, Stockholm, 1910; both in Swedish.
A. Hjelt, The First Official Accounts of the Swedish Tabular Records, Halsingfors,
1899.
A. Hjelt, The Origin, Organization and Earlier Activity of the Swedish Tabulating
Office, Halsingfors, 1900.
Sweden, its People and its Industry. An Historical and Statistical Handbook)
published by Order of the Government, edited by Gustav Sundbarg, Stock-
holm, 1904.
Sweden, An Historical and Statistical Handbook published by Order of the Swedish
Government, edited by Guinchard, Stockholm, 1914 (second edition of the work
mentioned just above).
SWEDEN 569
H. Gahn, Primary Material of Swedish Population Statintics, 1749-1916 (Journal
for Political Economy), Lund, 1916.
Proceedings of the Tabulating Commission (unprinted).
Letters of Per Wargentin (mostly unprinted; in the Archives of the Swedish Academy
of Sciences).
In regard to the older Swedish Vital Statistics, see also Milne, Treatise on the Law
of Mortality and on Annuities, Edinburgh, 1837.
UNITED STATES
STATISTICAL WORK OF THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED
STATES *
By John Cummings, Ph.D.
Statistician, United States Bureau of the Census
American statisticians regard the late General Francis
A. Walker as the leading authority upon the statistical
work of the United States during the early period of its
development. Walker was intimately and eminently asso-
ciated with that work from the close of the Civil War to the
completion of the Tenth Census (that of 1880). His re-
markable personality, his executive capacity and genius for
statistical interpretation contributed to make him the fore-
most American statistician of his time. Speaking before
the International Statistical Institute at the opening session
of its meeting in Chicago in 1893, Walker made this inter-
esting reference to the origin and development of federal
statistics in the United States:
"A strong passion for statistics early developed itself in
the life of our people, and such statesmen and publicists as
Hamilton, Pelletiah Webster, Alkanah Watson, Tench Coxe,
Seybert, and Pitkin became working statisticians and
founded their theories of economics and taxation inductively.
No government in the world has ever lavished money and
labor more generously upon statistical inquiry, nor has any
people ever responded more cheerfully and patiently in this
respect. . . . Therefore, I repeat, we of the United
States can at least claim for our statistics that in the matter
of good intentions, whether we consider the liberahty of the
government, the zeal of our working statisticians, or the
*The writer is under obligation to officials in the government offices for
courtesies extended by them, and for aid in the preparation of this account of
federal statistical work. Sections of the manuscript or proof have been read
and amended by those familiar with the work of individual offices, although this
assistance has necessarily been entirely unofficial.
574 MEMORIAL VOLUME
public spirit of our people, no nation has more to boast of." *
A keen interest in statistical statements felt generally in the
community, liberality on the part of the government, and
zeal on the part of those directing the statistical agencies of
the government, have been conditions favorable to credita-
ble achievements by these agencies. The extent to which,
in Walker's opinion, these achievements must be credited to
these favorable conditions, rather than to proved technical
and scientific qualifications on the part of those engaged in
statistical work, may be inferred from the following sentences
quoted from his last public utterances:
"I do not know of a single man now holding, or who has
ever held, a position in this country as the head of a statisti-
cal bureau, or as chief of a statistical service, or as a statis-
tician, who had any elementary training for his work. All
those who have had anything to do with American statistics
came into the service comparatively late in life, without any
elementary training, sometimes taking up the most gigantic
piece of work, the service even extending over this entire
country, with its twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy millions of
people, and two or three millions of square miles, simply
with an interest in the subject as the only guarantee of their
competency." f
It may be noted that Hamilton, as early as 1794, in com-
plying with one of the numerous requests made upon him
under that provision of the organic act establishing the
Department of the Treasury, which made it the duty of the
Secretary to "make report, and give information to either
branch of the legislature, in person or in writing (as he may
be required), respecting all matters required of him by the
Senate or House of Representatives, or which shall pertain
to his oflGice,"J felt it incumbent upon him to submit certain
reflections to the consideration of the Senate, in the follow-
*AddTess before the International Statistical Institute at the opening session of
its meeting in Chicago, 1893.
fAddress before the American Statistical Association, at a meeting held in Wash-
ington, in 1896.
tAct of September 2, 1789.
UNITED STATES 575
ing words, warning against the tendency to impose onerous
requirements upon the Secretary:
Occasional and desultory calls, frequently made for returns and statements,
which involve complicated and elaborate investigations and much clerkship,
interfere more materially with the regular conducting of the public business than
can easily be imagined, except by those who have the progress of it immediately
under their eye. They oblige the principal o£Scers and the most expert clerks to
transfer so much of their attention from the ordinary and indispensable operations
of the Department, as must render it impossible (if the practice should continue in
the same degree in which it has for some time existed) for the officers of the Depart-
ment to be responsible for the orderly, punctual, and efficacious execution of its
primary and most essential objects.*
In the statutory provision that the Secretary should report
"respecting all matters required of him," or upon those
matters pertaining to his office, the connective "or" removes
any ambiguity as to the intention of Congress in making
requisitions upon the Secretary for general information, and
in fact seems almost to make his proper function as Secretary
of the Treasury incidental to functions not related immedi-
ately to finance. It virtually removes every limit to the
scope of the Secretary of the Treasury's legitimate interests.
This conception of his function seems to have developed at
the very outset, and it had been originally proposed to
designate the Secretary of this Department a Secretary of
Commerce and Finance — a title, it may be noted, which
would have been fairly descriptive of the scope of the func-
tions subsequently exercised by offices of the Treasury. In
that Department, bureaus dealing with domestic industries,
foreign and domestic commerce, navigation, and immigra-
tion were built up diuring the nineteenth century, and the
principal statistical work of the federal government, other
than that undertaken by the Bureau of the Census, was
developed.
The practice of requisitioning statistical statements, to
which Hamilton refers, has not been discontinued, nor has
it been continued simply "in the same degree" in which it
existed in Hamilton's time, but rather in a degree far sur-
♦February 10, 1794. American State Papers, Vol. I, p. 274.
576 MEMORIAL VOLUME
passing any that Hamilton could out of his own personal
experience have conceived to be possible. The requirements
of Congress, which may be taken as reflecting the demands of
the public generally, for statistical information have taken
the form of standing orders calling for voluminous periodical
reports from executive departments at frequent and regular
intervals, covering a wide range of statistical inquiry, and,
on occasion, for other voluminous reports from commissions
appointed to undertake special lines of inquiry. These
requirements long since ceased to be of a character which
may be adequately described as occasional or desultory.
They have increased to such an extent that, in 1914, one of
the nine executive departments — ^the Department of Com-
merce— ^in the printed reports relating to or resulting from
the ordinary performance of its regular legislatively pre-
scribed functions, issued pubhcations embracing in the
aggregate some 40,000 pages — a record largely statistical in
character. And to the statistical issues of this department,
in summing up the annual output of statistics by the federal
government, must be added, besides the statistical publica-
tions of the Department of Agriculture, and the statistical
statements of the Treasury, the publications of such impor-
tant agencies as the Bureau of Labor Statistics — whose
annual issues aggregate some 9,000 pages — the Interstate
Commerce Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission;
together with the less extensive or less purely statistical pub-
lications of such agencies as the Children's Bureau, the
Bureau of Education, and the Bureau of Mines, not to men-
tion a very considerable number of other executive services
of the government, more or less occupied with the collection
and compilation of statistical data for administrative pur-
poses.
The early development of the statistical activity of the
federal government for many years is largely summed up in
an account of the statistics of our foreign commerce and
shipping, prepared in the Treasury Department. Later the
progressive elaboration of the decennial census created in
UNITED STATES 577
the Census OflSce an important statistical agency, which has
become a permanent general statistical bureau resembling
in the importance and diversity of its functions the central
statistical oflBice of Germany. An account of the develop-
ment during the last two or three decades must take a wide
range to embrace other agencies and many lines of statistical
inquiry which have originated independently of commercial
or fiscal interests, and of the social and economic statistical
accounting undertaken periodically by the census.
The origins of the statistical work of the federal govern-
ment are found in those provisions of the Constitution which
empower Congress to regulate commerce between the states
and with foreign nations, to provide for the general welfare,
and to employ necessary and proper means for the execution
of its prescribed powers; and in that article which orders an
enumeration of the population decennially, to provide a
basis for the apportionment of representation and of direct
taxes. In the case of any given line of statistical inquiry,
however, the authority for undertaking it may have a some-
what nebulous and vaguely defined origin in more than one
of these general provisions. Much of the decennial census
work, for example, can not be brought under cover of that
clause which prescribes an enumeration of the population
once within every period of ten years, but may, perhaps, as
weU be regarded rather as an exercise of the power to pro-
vide for the general welfare, or as a necessary and proper
means of securing such information as Congress requires to
enable it intelligently to legislate within the field of its con-
stitutional authority; and much of the statistical work which
has been instituted under the commerce clause, such as that
relating to corporations engaged in interstate and foreign
commerce, and specifically to trusts and monopolies, is
broadly affected with the general welfare.
In the following survey of the statistical work of the federal
government, no account has been undertaken of that statis-
tical oflSce accounting which in many branches of the federal
service — as, for example, in the case of the Treasury account-
38
578 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ing — ^results in statistical compilations, and in the accumula-
tion of statistical data of special value. Only those lines
of development have been noted which are primarily and
essentially statistical. Even of this purely statistical work
only the general trend and character of its development iu
its more important aspects has been indicated. First there
have been taken up those special lines of inquiry instituted
under the commerce clause, and under the general provisions
as regards welfare, and administrative or executive compe-
tency, and, finally, those inquiries which have been instituted
under cover of the provision for a decennial enumeration of
the population.
Statistics of Foreign Commerce. — Data relating to the
character and volume of our foreign commerce have been
compiled each year beginning with 1789, and covering the
entire period of our national existence, and the gathering and
compilation of these data constituted for many years the
most considerable statistical undertaking of the federal
government. The interest manifested by Congress in
statements of our foreign commerce has arisen directly out
of their importance imder our fiscal system which derives a
large portion of the public revenue from duties levied upon
imports. In the community generally, as well as in Con-
gress, interest in the statistics of imports and exports has
been constantly stimulated, also, by the protective tariflF
controversy, which has undoubtedly exaggerated, the rela-
tive importance of our foreign as compared with our domes-
tic commerce. As the one line of statistical compilation
which has been in continuous operation since the institution
of the government, the preparation of statistics of our foreign
commerce may properly be considered first in an account of
the development of the statistical activities of the federal
government.
The primary agents for the collection of these data have been
from the beginning the collectors of customs in the Treasury
Department. The second act of the first Congress, approved
July 4, 1789, prescribed certain duties to be paid on imports
UNITED STATES 5"?^
entering the country on and after August 1, 1789, but made
no provision as to the agencies to be employed in collecting
these duties. An act to regulate the collection of duties
followed, however, in the same month, and was approved
July 31, 1789, the day immediately preceding that on which
the payment of duties was to begin. This act defined cus-
toms districts and designated ports of entry and of delivery,
provided for the appointment of collectors, and in general
instituted the machinery for the collection of duties which
has. been in continuous operation down to the present time.
It made it the duty of the collector of customs
to receive all reports, manifests and documents, made or exhibited to him by
the master of any ship or vessel, ... to make due entry and record, in books
to be kept for that purpose, all such manifests, and the packages, marks, and
numbers contained therein, to receive the entry of all ships and vessels, and of all
the goods, wares and merchandise, imported in such ships or vessels, together with
the original invoices thereof, to estimate the duties payable thereon ... to
receive all monies paid ... to grant all permits for unloading, ... to
employ proper persons as weighers, gangers, measurers and inspectors ... to
provide storehouses, etc.*
It was provided further that collectors should keep "fair
and true accounts of all transactions," and should "once in
three months, or oftener, if they should be required, transmit
their accoimts for settlement to the department or officer"
authorized to receive them. This act was superseded in the
year following by an act somewhat more detailed in its
provisions regulating the collection of duties, and prescrib-
ing the mode of ascertaining the tonnage of vessels, and
providing that the master of a ship bound for a foreign port
should deliver a manifest of the cargo on board, under oath,
whereupon the collector should grant clearance.f
The Act of 1789 instituted the continuous record of our
foreign commerce. From time to time, as they were com-
pleted in the Treasury, Hamilton transmitted to Congress
*Laws of 1789, Ch. 6, Par. 5.
tAct of 1790, Ch. 62. Approved August 4. These legislative provisions are
further elaborated and systematized in subsequent acts, as, for example, in the act
approved March 2, 1799, extending over more than ninety pages.
580 MEMORIAL VOLUME
during the year 1791, statistical summary statements com-
piled from the custom-house records of our foreign commerce
during the year ending September 30, 1790, and similar
statements were prepared annually in the Treasury covering
the period from 1789 to 1820. In the latter year. Congress
provided for a more foi'mal report to be issued annually by
the Treasiu-y which should embrace the whole range of
statistics of our commerce and navigation, compiled from
custom-house records. This series of annual reports which,
beginning with the year 1821, has been continued down to
the present time, bears the clear impress of the original
reports prepared by Hamilton. The character of these first
reports is, therefore, of considerable historical interest.
On January 6, 1791, Hamilton transmitted "a general
abstract of duties arising on the tonnage of vessels entered
into the United States, from the 1st of October, 1789, to the
30th of September, 1790." This statement shows for each
of the thirteen states composing the Union, the tonnage of
American vessels employed in the coasting trade, and in the
fisheries, and the tonnage and amount of tonnage duties
collected on American vessels engaged in the foreign trade
and on foreign owned vessels in that trade, by nationality,
specifying ten countries. In making up this abstract,
Hamilton seems to have encountered a difficulty which has,
in|every succeeding year, constituted one of the most per-
plexing administrative problems involved in the preparation
of our foreign commerce statistics — ^the difficulty of getting
in promptly the returns from certain ports. Although more
than three months had elapsed since the close of the period
covered by the data, it is noted that the returns from Charles-
ton, South Carolina, for the last quarter of the year, had not
been received.
In the month following, on February 15, 1791, Hamilton
transmitted "a general return of the exports of the United
States, abstracted from custom-house returns, commencing
on various days ia August, 1789, whereon they were respec-
tively opened, and ending on the 30th of September last"
UNITED STATES 581
(1790). The statement is limited to the period ending
September 30, because there was still a "deficiency of many
of the returns for the last quarter of the year 1790." In
this abstract the quantity and value of 129 classes of exports
are given by countries.
On November 17, 1791, more than a year after the close
of the period covered by the data, a statement was trans-
mitted of the goods, wares and merchandise, imported during
the period from October 1, 1789, to September 1, 1790.
In this statement the value of imports subject respectively
to ad valorem rates of 5, 7^, 10, 12 and 15 per cent, duty,
and the quantity imported, of 49 classes of enumerated
articles subject to specific duties, are shown, for 39 countries
or regions whence imported. The fiscal character of these
statements is clearly in evidence in this mixed accounting —
reflecting the terms of the tariff act — ^for a portion of the
imports by value without quantity, and, for a portion,|by
quantity without value. This defect in the import state-
ments was remedied by the law of 1820.*
Finally, on November 28, 1791, Hamilton transmitted to
the Senate, "a return of the tonnage of all the vessels em-
ployed in the import, coasting, and fishing trades of the
United States, for one year ending on the 30th of September,
1790," exhibiting "the degrees in which American and
foreign vessels participate in every branch of the commerce
of the United States except the export trade, for which a
similar report is now in preparation." In this statement
the tonnage of vessels arriving from 30 specified countries
or ports is classified by nationality, as belonging to the
United States and to specified foreign nations.
'Requests were made upon Secretaries of the Treasury for statements showing
the value of imports. In 1796, for example. Secretary Wolcott, replying to such a
request, explained that there were "no documents in the Treasiury which would
enable him to state the value of those articles of merchandise which have been sub-
ject to specific duties; in respect to such articles, the quantities only can be exhib-
ited. " Again, in 1812, Gallatin, in a letter of transmittal, explains that "documents
in the Treasury show the value of those articles only which pay duties ad valorem.
Of articles paying specific duties, the quantity, and not the value, is returned."
582 MEMORIAL VOLUME
It will be apparent from the above brief account of them
that these original statements relating to our foreign com-
merce during the first year of record, even when judged by
standards of today, were remarkably complete. In some
respects, they were, in fact, more complete than the state-
ments prepared in the years immediately following.*
Eflfective administration of the service in ports distributed
along the entire extent of the Atlantic Coast, and the assem-
bling of the returns, must have been exceedingly difficult,
and in view of the remoteness of some of the ports of entry —
measured in time required to transmit reports to the central
office — ^it is not surprising that the intervals between the
close of the year and the completion of the statements should
have been protracted. Statements of exports for a given
year were generally transmitted to Congress within four or
five months of the close of the period covered, while the
preparation of the import tables commonly required from
fourteen to sixteen months.f Even after the lapse of these
intervals the returns were frequently incomplete.
Considering the mass of data compiled in the Treasury
during the years prior to 1821 from custom-house records,
and the mass of data compiled by the same agencies from
these same records in later years, it is remarkable that the
*The statement of exports during the year ending September 30, 1790, for example,
■as noted in the text, gives for each of 129 specified articles the quantity and the
■value exported to specified foreign countries. The statements for the years 1791-
1794 show quantity only for specified articles exported, with aggregate values
covering the exports to specified foreign countries, and, separately, the exports
from each state. The statement of exports during the year ending September 30,
1800, is reduced to a single colimin of figures run against specified articles under the
box-head "quantity or value," with separate statements of aggregate values of
exports to specified foreign cotmtries, and from each state. Beginning in 1803,
values are shown for classes of exports, but not until 1817 is the value and quantity
exported of each article of domestic production shown, articles of foreign production
being still run against a single column of figures under the box-head "quantity or
value."
t On February 7, 1811, the statement of exports for the year ending September 30,
1810, and the statement of imports for the year ending September 30, 1809, were
transmitted. Generally, however, the statement of imports for any given year was
transmitted a few weeks in advance of the statement of exports for the year following.
UNITED STATES 583
only figures carried back over these earlier years in oflBcial
comparative tables are those showing the total value of our
exports and of our imports, the figures for imports being,
in fact, largely estimates, the outcome of a tour de force
executed in the Treasury on the occasion of preparing an
exhibit of historical tables for the World's Fair in 1892. As
regards the volume of our exports, it may be noted that the
totals for these earlier years are probably more accurate and
complete than the corresponding figures for recent years.
As regards the coasting trade the record of "the great and
numerous interchanges of domestic and foreign commodities,
which occur by water among the states,"* must have been
quite incomplete. Under the provisions of an act passed in
1793,t regulating the coasting trade, masters of vessels
destined from a district in one state to a district in the same
or an adjoining state, were not requiired to dehver manifests
of their cargoes, or obtain permits previous to departure,
or to report to the collector on arrival in port, unless the
vessel carried foreign articles exceeding eight hxmdred dollars
in value. Under this regulation a large volume of the coast-
ing trade must have escaped any sort of statistical account-
ing. In these earlier statements the classification of imports
in any year is determined by the terms of the tariff act under
which the articles were imported. The value of commodities
paying specified ad valorem rates is given, and the quantity
of commodities paying specific rates. The tariff schedule
thus determined whether, in naaking up a statement of
imports, the value or the quantity should be recorded. In
the statement of imports for the year ending September 30,
1790, values of imports are shown under five different rates,
and in the course of the next few years some nineteen differ-
ent ad valorem rates were specified in the tariff acts, the rates
being varied according as the imports came in foreign or in
American vessels — a distinction, it may be noted, which was
* Tench Coxe, letter transmitting a table of reports for five years ending
September 30, 1795.
tAct of 1793, Ch. 52, Par. 14. Approved February 18.
584 MEMORIAL VOLUME
first made in the Treasury records in 1792. Similarly as
regards specific rates, the number and the character of the
classifications varied under the several acts. Finally, no
account is made of free imports. Regarded as a statistical
record of commerce, rather than as fiscal statements of the
Treasury, the fundamental defect in these early compilations
is obviously the failure to state values for imports paying
specific duties, and the omission of quantities for imports
paying duties ad valorem.
In transmitting the statement of exports for the year end-
ing September 30, 1800, Secretary Dexter estimated "the
value of goods, wares, and merchandise of foreign growth or
production, exported" during the year and similar estimates
were made by Gallatin in the years immediately following.
This distinction established itself formally in the tables of
exports for the year 1803.
The system of statistical accounting in the Treasury was
materially improved by the act approved February 24, 1820,
entitled an act "to provide for obtaining accurate state-
ments of the foreign commerce of the United States." The
essential provisions of this act have been continued in force
down to the present time, and have largely determined the
form and character of the statistics of our foreign com-
merce.
The act provides that the Register of the Treasury shall
"annually prepare statistical accounts of the commerce of
the United States with foreign countries," which shall show
the "kinds, quantities and values" of all articles exported
to, and of all articles imported from each foreign country;
that the statement of exports shall "show, separately, the
exports of articles of the production or manufacture of the
United States, and their values, and ... of foreign
countries and their values"; that the navigation accounts
shall show the tonnage of American and foreign vessels
entering or leaving ports of the United States, by nationality,
and " in such manner as also to show the amount of the ton-
nage of all vessels departing for [or arriving from] every
UNITED STATES 585
particular foreign country with which the United States
have any considerable commerce," stating separately the
tonnage of American and of foreign vessels; that "the kinds
and quantities of imported articles free from duty shall be
ascertained by entry . . . or by actual examination";
that the value of such articles and of articles subject to
specific duties shall be ascertained "in the same manner in
which the value of imports subject to duties ad valorem is
ascertained"; that collectors shall make quarterly returns
to the Register of the Treasury, prepared in accordance
with such rules and directions as the Secretary of the
Treasury shall prescribe; and that the Secretary shall de-
termine the forms of the annual statements so as to "show
the actual state of commerce and navigation between the
United States and foreign countries in each year. "*
During the succeeding period of forty five years, the detail
in the annual reports on Commerce and Navigation increased
from year to year, but the general character of the statements
was not essentially changed. The work involved in the
preparation of the reports, however, necessarily increased
with the volume and diversity of our foreign commerce, and
in 1866t Congress created a bureau in the Treasury, under
a director, charged with the duty of preparing "the report
on the statistics of commerce and navigation, exports and
imports, now required by law to be submitted annually to
Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury . . . and
• . . as soon as practicable after the organization of
this oflEice . . . monthly reports of the exports and im-
*In the first report under this act the value of articles imported, free and dutiable,
is shown by countries, and for each country the aggregate value of imports into the
United States in American and in foreign vessels. The quantity and value of
domestic and of foreign exports is shown by articles and by cotmtries to which ex-
ported, and the aggregate value of such exports carried in American and in foreign
vessels to each country. The table forms in the report are not perfect. Table 7,
for example, if read literally, shows the value not only of exports, but also of imports,
and the amount of American and foreign tonnage, exported to specified foreign
countries. Under Navigation is shown the amount of American and of foreign
tonnage entering from, departing for, and belonging to specified foreign countries.
tAct of July 28, 1866.
586 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ports of the United States, including the quantities and
values of goods warehoused or withdrawn from warehouses,
and such statistics relative to trade and iadustry of the
coimtry as the Secretary of the Treasury shall consider
expedient." Provision is made further for the preparation
of an annual statement "of all merchandise passiag in tran-
sit through the United States to foreign countries, each
description of merchandise . . . warehoused, with-
drawn from warehouse for consumption, for exportation,
for transportation to other districts, and remaining in ware-'
house"; and for the preparation of an annual statement of
vessels registered, enrolled and licensed. Finally the sweep-
ing provision is made — which would seem almost to justify
the conclusion expressed by Director Young in his annual
report for 1872, that it was "within the legitimate province
of this bureau to furnish any statistics of public utility";
that "it shall be the further duty of said director to collect,
digest and arrange for Congress, the statistics of the manu-
factures of the United States, their localities, sources of raw
material, markets, exchanges with producing regions of the
country, transportation of products, wages, and such other
conditions as are found to aflfect their prosperity."
In accordance with the provisions of this act the new
bureau was organized and Alex. Delmar was appointed
director. In his first annual report, Mr. Delmar pointed out
that the tables relating to commerce and navigation "though
distributed gratuitously, and in large numbers, were rarely
quoted, except to be confuted by less pretentious, but ob-
viously more correct, statistics of boards of trade, chambers
of commerce, and other local organizations." His analysis
of the foreign commerce accounting developed many inaccu-
racies, including errors of omission and of commission, and
inconsistencies in form of presentation. In his second gen-
eral report to the Secretary on the work of the Bureau,
dated May, 1868, the Director takes occasion to review in
greater detail the statistical practices which had become
UNITED STATES 587
established in the Treasury since 1820, and which in his
opinion rendered the statistics prepared under the old sys-
tem of accounting of little or no value.
It was not to be expected that those who had been inti-
mately associated with the preparation of the foreign com-
merce statistics in the Treasury should take kindly to this
sort of criticism, and it is not surprising to find that the
office of director was abolished shortly after the publication
of the report,* and its duties transferred temporarily to the
Special Commissioner of the Revenue.
The specific defects in the commerce statistics which had
brought the Director to the conclusions noted above may
be briefly indicated. In the foreign commerce reports cov-
ering the years 1821-1866, a statement of imports had been
run under the title "General statement of imports from
foreign countries." This title Mr. Delmar characterized as
"erroneous and misleading," and in the first report prepared
imder his direction it was changed to "General statement of
entries of imports from foreign coxmtries." The former
title, he points out, had been correct during the period
1821-1846, that is to say, during the period prior to the
establishment of the warehouse system. The totals shown
in this account were, he insisted, not the totals which might
properly be set over against the totals of domestic exports.
He found, moreover, that while some collectors had followed
the practice of returning for this accoimt import entries,
other collectors had returned imports for consumption, and
that both sorts of returns were accepted and compiled in
the same account. Products of American fisheries, amount-
ing to more than $6,000,000 in 1867, were included as im-
ports, although they were not admissible to the account
under the law of 1820, which called for an account of "goods,
wares, and merchandise imported into the United States
*The report, to Secretary McCuUock, is dated May, 1868, and the act abolishing
the office of director was approved July 20, 1868.
588 MEMORIAL VOLUME
from foreign countries."* American guano ($1,670,493),
also, was included in imports, although the law declared
this to be in the coasting trade, and products of the state of
Maine brought to certain ports via New Brunswick, which
imder the Ashburton treaty of 1842, with Great Britain,
and under two acts of Congress passed in 1866, as well as
by a Treasury regulation of 1866, were products of domestic
origin. In-transitu and transhipment entries were in-
cluded by certain collectors ia their returns for the import
account; commodities landed and included in the import
entries reported at the port, were in certain cases reported
again when re-warehoused in another district. Instances
were found of double returns covering single transactions, of
defective entries, of arbitrary adjustments, and of inaccurate
valuations. An instance is cited where nearly $1,000,000
had been forced into the item "unenumerated articles" in
the returns of one district. Other more complex forms of
error in the composition of the several accounts are noted in
considerable detail.
Omissions of returns were frequent, as a result of the prac-
tice followed, of making up the year's account to embrace
such returns as had been received, on the assumption that
in the case of those districts from which no returns had been
received there were no entries to report. Transactions had
been reported in one account in currency, and in another
account in specie value. The old system of accounting, of
forty years' standing, was, in fact, "reduced to the last
degree of degeneracy."
In explanation of this degeneration, attention is called to
the increase in the volume of transactions to be recorded.
The report on Commerce and Navigation for the year 1821,
*In this connection he notes that the item "other products" of American fish-
eries, which had been stated in pomids (in 1867, the nvimber of pounds was 9,588,270),
proved to "consist of head-matter, whalebone, ambergris, cured codfish, mackerel,
herring, and other fish, oysters, other shell fish, fresh fish, sponge, shell, and bone —
other than whalebone, teeth, skins, and manure, and other substances, that were
variously measured by gallons, pounds, quintals, bushels, number, tons, etc. How
they were previously reduced to one uniform measure pounds, does not appear. "
UNITED STATES 589
of 165 octavo pages, listed 78 articles and classes of articles,
and 56 countries. The report for 1867, the last prepared
under the old system, comprised 704 octavo pages, listed
826 articles and classes of articles, and 86 countries. The
amount of clerical labor involved in the preparation of the
annual report is indicated in the following description of the
manuscript record of the 1867 volume:
"The manuscript record account of the 'import' and
auxiliary tables in this volume, to say nothing of the manu-
script transcripts prepared for the printer, nor of the record
tables of the export, reexport, tonnage, and other accounts,
consists of 35 volumes, 32 6i which are 21 inches long by
18| wide; and three of which, 30 inches by 21f, containing
together 10,404 pages, over one-half a yard wide, and to-
gether over three and one-half miles long." *
Incidentally, the wide range of the Bureau's activities in
these first years of its existence may be noted. The Di-
rector's report for the year ending June 30, 1868, states that a
census of the population of the country had been taken in
1867, through the internal revenue organization, "in accord-
ance with the practice inaugurated in the year 1866"; that
a census of the cotton crop in 1867 had been published, and
that the returns of a similar census in 1868 were in prepara-
tion for publication; that "original statistics of the railroads
of the United States, their length, cost, quahty of rolling
stock, the amount of their annual earnings and expenses,
number of passengers, the quantity and value of freight
transported, etc., and statistics of the domestic manufac-
tiu-es of the country" were being obtained and compiled.
The system of accounting instituted after the creation of
the Bureau of Statistics under the Act of 1866 has been con-
tinued in operation with some modifications down to the
present time. In the report for the year 1914, on the
Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States,
data are compiled to show the movement of gold and silver
and the character and volume of our commerce with one
* Director's report, 1868, p. 18.
590 MEMORIAL VOLUME
hundred specified foreign countries. It is dated January 12,
1915, but practically all of the data had been previously
issued in monthly and quarterly statements.
In the preparation of the foreign commerce statistics under
the present system of accounting, collectors of customs are
provided with detailed schedules in accordance with which
returns of imports and of exports are to be made. The
schedule provided for the retiu'ns of imports for consump-
tion, governing the classification after July 1, 1915, and pre-
pared "solely for statistical purposes," carries more than
3,000 commodity designations. As regards the classifica-
tion of imports under the schedules in operation at any
particular period, the detail required to be shown in the
retiu-ns is, in general, determined by the provisions of the
tariff act or acts in force. Every article or class of articles
specified in the tariff act is separately shown in the returns.
In a sense, the return of imports to the Bureau is essentially
a fiscal statistical statement of the commodity basis of the
customs revenue. This is true even of the free list, since
the articles admitted free are specifically enumerated in the
tariff act as well as those subject to duty. In recent years,
however, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce
has elaborated its statistical statements to meet the demands
made upon it for more detailed information, and authority
to require such returns as are deemed essential is specifically
granted by the tariff act. The following statement, pre-
pared by an official of the Bureau, indicates the extent to
which this authority is being exercised:
"In many cases the statistical classification is extended
materially beyond the classification required for tariff pur-
poses, especially in the case of free goods. For instance,
hides and skins, which are classified in the tariff under the
general group of 'hides and skins, raw or unciu-ed,' are in
the statistical schedules separated into classes of 'Buffalo,
calf, cattle, goat, horse, kangaroo, sheep, and all other,'
and for some of these classes separate return is required for
'dry,' or 'green or pickled,' stating the number of pieces as
UNITED STATES 591
well as the weight and value. Likewise in the case of duti-
able laces, embroideries, etc., which in the tariff are classified
under a general head, irrespective of the material from which
they are made, are separated in the statistical schedule into
cotton, flax or other vegetable fiber except cotton, and silk.
Under each of these heads they are again subdivided into
embroideries; lace window curtains; laces, handmade and
other; nets and nettings, veils and veilings, etc.
"This enlargement of the statistical classification beyond
the tariff requirements is made primarily at the request and
for the information of trade organizations interested in more
detailed statistics in their particular lines than is shown by
the tariff classification. Under former tariff laws it was in
many cases difficult for the collectors of customs to obtain
statistics in greater detail than was required for the pur-
pose of assessing duties, since the description in entries and
invoices was often confined to the tariff requirements. The
tariff act of October 3, 1913, however, in Section III, para-
graph F, specifically authorizes the Secretary of Conunerce
and the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a list or
enumeration of articles for statistical piuposes, and requires
that the description of imported goods in invoices shall be
in sufficient detail to comply with this list. It also makes
it the duty of American consuls abroad who certify the
invoices to see that this provision is carried out, and re-
quires of collectors of customs that this detail be shown in
the entries filed at the custom house. The list or classi-
fication of imported articles is officially designated as 'Sched-
ule E,' and is furnished free of charge to American consuls,
foreign shippers, custom-house brokers, and others engaged
in preparing import documents.
"In the last tariff law ad valorem rates took in many cases
the place of former specific rates; the number of subdivisions
was also materially reduced, especially in the case of cotton
yarns; cotton cloths; flax, hemp, or ramie thread or twine;
spun silk; silk fabrics, and others. On the strength of the
above provision the statistical schedule governing importa-
592 MEMORIAL VOLUME
tions since the enactment of the new tarifiF requires in many
cases a more detailed description than is necessary for assess-
ment of duties; this was done in order to provide for the use
of Congress, as a basis for future tariff legislation, compara-
tive figures of importation of similar articles under different
rates of duty and different tariff classifications."*
Many of the distinctions maintained in the classification
of imports have no significance except as treasury state-
ments, that is to say, as evidence that the revenue law has
been enforced and duties collected as prescribed. This
is especially true of hundreds of minor distinctions imposed
upon the data by the tariff act. On the one hand classes
are created in the tariff act which embrace under one designa-
tion articles diverse in character, and, on the other hand,
articles similar in character are thrown into separate classes.
"Agricultiu-al implements," for example, which are admitted
free under the Act of 1913, covers in a single class "plows,
tooth and disk harrows, headers, harvesters, reapers, agricul-
tural drills and planters, mowers, horse-rakes, cultivators,
threshing machines, cotton gins, machinery for use in manu-
facturing sugar, wagons and carts, and all other agricultural
implements and parts of implements." More generally,
however, the import classification is infected with arbitrary
distinctions dependent upon varying rates of duty or fac-
tors determining the amount of duty assessable. Of cotton
cloth, for example, 160 classes are defined besides 71 other
classes of "manufactures of cotton," including a multitude of
distinctions such as "handkerchiefs or mufflers composed of
cotton not specifically provided for, not hemmed"; ditto,
hemmed; ditto, embroidered — ^three classes. Buttons are
distinguished and separately returned as agate buttons; bone
buttons; collar and cuff buttons and studs composed wholly
of bone, mother-of-pearl, ivory, or agate; collar and cuff
buttons of metal, valued at over twenty cents per dozen
pieces; all other metal buttons not specifically provided for;
*. Statement prepared by Mr. John Hohn, assistant chief of division, Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.
UNITED STATES 593
nickel-bar buttons; pearl or shell buttons in size below 26
lines; ditto, 26 lines and larger; shoe buttons; silk buttons;
trousers buttons of steel; ditto, of other metal; vegetable
ivory buttons below 36 lines; ditto, 36 lines and larger; and
other buttons not specifically provided for. It is rather
significant of the diflBculties encountered in so drawing the
provisions of the tariff act as to get specific returns, that of
the total imports in the year ending June 30, 1914, of "but-
tons, or parts of buttons, and button molds or blanks, fin-
ished or unfinished, not elsewhere specified" — which is
the general title covering the species of buttons which have
just been enumerated— valued at $2,122,461.45, $882,943.80,
or more than two fifths of the total value imported, is in the
residuary class of buttons "not specifically provided for."
It would not be difficult to account for the greater detail
in the return of buttons, in 18 classes, as compared with
the return of agricultural implements, in one class including
wagons and carts with cotton gins, sugar manufacturing
machinery and all "other" agricultural implements. In
brief, the explanation is that agricultural implements con-
stitute an inconsiderable item in the volume of imports and
are imported free of duty; while buttons are imported in
greater value and are subject to various rates of duty ad
valorem. A change in the tariff law might at any time
simphfy the button schedule and elaborate the agricultural
implement schedule. The classification of the tariff act
is independent of the statistical classification, and any
changes ia the tariff classification in the future may be
made, as they have been made in the past, without refer-
ence to the significance of the statistical compilations based
upon the returns made by the collectors.
It would obviously be impossible, within any practicable
limits of space, to show in full detail several thousands of
articles or classes of articles imported, by 49 customs dis-
tricts, and by 100 countries whence imported. To provide
for this detail would require a table extending over thousands
of pages. In the summary tables, and in the tables showing
594 MEMORIAL VOLUME
imports by countries, and by principal customs districts, a
short schedule of some six or seven hundred commodity
designations is used. This short schedule is employed also
in the monthly summary of Commerce and Finance. In
this short schedule, imports of cotton and manufactures of
cotton, for example, are returned under 29 designations, as
against 231 in the long schedule.
As regards exports, it should be noted that the classifica-
tion is free of the infection of tariff discriminations and revi-
sions, and is entirely subject to control by the bureau charged
with the duty of compiling the data. The schedule of
exports, embracing above five hundred designations, is essen-
tially a commodity classification unaffected by fiscal inter-
est. The return is not a treasury accoimting maintained for
administrative purposes, and the schedule is, as compiled
with the schedule of imports, much simpler. Cotton and
manufactures of cotton, for example, are compiled under 16
designations, and buttons and parts of buttons under one
designation. Agricultural implements, on the other hand,
are returned under six designations, and do not include
wagons, which are shown separately under "cars, carriages
and other vehicles."
Since 1893, collectors have been required by statute to
return exports leaving the country by rail (under act ap-
proved March 3, 1893), but no adequate provision has
been made for insuring completeness or accuracy either
in these returns of exports by rail, or in the returns of
exports by water. Although a persistent effort has been
made in recent years to secure the enactment of legislation
which would enable the collectors to obtain more accu-
rate and complete statements of exports, these returns are
still beiag made practically under the Act of 1820, passed
before the advent of steamships and railroads. Under
this "archaic" statute, collectors may refuse clearance to
any vessel for which a manifest of the cargo has not been
rendered, but this penalty, it is pointed out, obviously
can not be enforced against ocean liners and mail carriers
UNITED STATES 595
sailing on regular time schedules. To secure complete
manifests in accurate detail, of the volume of commodities
brought into the chief ports by rail for export, legislation is
clearly required which will impose upon common carriers the
duty of providing manifests under some enforceable regula-
tion. Once the cargo is laden on board ship, verification
of the manifest is practically impossible. Except for ex-
ports by rail, it is probably true that our returns of exports
have become progressively less accurate and complete,
nearly in proportion as the volume of exports has increased.
For years, manifests of exports were sworn to by irre-
sponsible agents, under conditions which made any verifi-
cation in detail practically impossible. Some improvement
has been made in recent years, but legislation is necessary
as a condition of obtaining accurate returns.
An obvious desideratum in the statistics of commerce and
industry is a correlation of the statistics of foreign commerce
with those of domestic production and consumption. Statis-
tics measuring the volume of our foreign commerce acquire
significance largely in proportion as they can be so inter-
preted in terms of domestic manufactures, agriculture,
and trade, as to measure with some degree of accuracy at
least, in the case of each principal product, the relative
amounts produced and consumed at home, the surplus
exported, and the deficiency supplied from abroad. Specifi-
cally the question has been raised as to the possibility of
correlating the statistics of foreign commerce with the census
statistics of manufactures.
As regards the possibility of correlation, certain inherent
difficulties are apparent. Such a correlation as is contem-
plated necessarily involves the establishment of a relatively
permanent classification of commodities entering into our
foreign commerce, which shall be independent of the provi-
sions and revisions of the tariff schedule. Unlesd the classi-
fication is permanent, there would seem to be little if any
advantage in correlation, since a relatively permanent classi-
fication maintained independently by the Census Bureau
596 MEMORIAL VOLUME
would be preferable to a correlated classification subject to
change upon the occasion of every revision of the tariflF.
As regards imports, the establishment of a permanent classi-
fication would probably have to be confined to compara-
tively large groups, specifying within these groups the
insignificant discriminations imposed by the tariff law,
unless the Bureau was prepared to undertake an indepen-
dent classification suflSciently comprehensive to embrace in
detail the whole range of commodities entering into our
foreign and domestic commerce, a classification which should
in fact provide a common scheme of classification covering
imports, exports and domestic products.
It would seem to be entirely within the legislatively de-
fined scope of the fimctions of the Bureau of Foreign and
Domestic Commerce which now compiles these data to
institute such a classification, but such an extension of its
statistical service would clearly involve a very material
increase in the labor available for compilation of the immense
volume of import and export data flowing in upon the
Bureau from month to month. No radical change in the
export schedule would seem to be required, since this is
essentially a simple and permanent classification by articles.
It should be noted, however, that any such scheme of
correlation as is contemplated would involve radical changes
in the practice of the Census Bureau in the compilation of
its data relating to manufactures. The census classification
of the products of manufactures is based primarily upon
a classification of manufacturing establishments into some
350 classes with reference in the case of each establishment
to its principal product. The aggregate product of the
establishments in each class is the product of that industry,
and it will be apparent that this aggregate product in the
case of certain industries represents a considerable diver-
sity of output. To the extent that the census scheme of
classification is confined to a grouping of aggregate prod-
ucts of establishments by industries, no close correlation
of the census data and of the foreign commerce data can
UNITED STATES 597
be achieved except in those lines of industry in which the
aggregate output of establishments is comparatively simple
in character. It would seem, however, entirely possible for
the Census Bureau to undertake a complete compilation,
based upon the manufactures schedule, of the products of
the manufacturing establishments covered by the returns,
and it would appear that a perfect correlation of our foreign
commerce statistics with our statistics of domestic manufac-
tures is merely a question of compilation of data available
in the original returns. Such a correlation, however, can
not be realized by any modification of the census classifica-
tion by industry, but would involve an entirely dififerent
sort of classification, namely, a classification of the specific
products of manufacturing establishments, as reported on
the manufactures schedule and without any grouping by
industry. It can not be doubted that the significance and
value of the statistics would be increased by the adoption of
some common system of accounting which should embrace
the articles of domestic production and those of foreign
commerce.
Statistics of Internal Commerce. — Some account is re-
quired of the extent to which the intentions of Congress, as
expressed in the Act of 1866 creating the Bureau of Statistics
in the Treasury Department, and in subsequent acts re-
quiring the collection and compilation of data relating to
internal commerce, have been realized and of the agencies
and methods which have been employed.
In general it would appear that Congress intended by the
organic Act of 1866 to constitute the Treasury Bureau of
Statistics an agency for the collection and compilation of
annual statistics relating to domestic commerce and manu-
factures. In this act the duty is imposed upon the Director
of "collecting, digesting and arranging" statistics of manu-
factures, covering in general such "conditions as are found
to aflfect their prosperity," and specifically their geographical
distribution, the sources of their raw material, their markets,
the transportation of their products, and the wages paid.
698 MEMORIAL VOLUME
But neither the agencies to be employed in securing these
data nor the character of the statistical reports to be pre-
pared are specified in the act, and no provision seems to have
been made to enable the Director to perform adequately
this portion of his legally prescribed duties. The slight
increase in the working force of the Bureau was sufficient
only to meet the increased requirements of the foreign com-
merce accounting under the more exacting provisions of the
new act.
Data relating to foreign commerce was a by-product of
customs revenue collection, and as regards these data the
functions of the Bureau of Statistics were, and have con-
tinued to be, essentially clerical. The law provided the
agencies and prescribed the methods by which the data
were brought into the Bureau. The primary compilation
of the data was imposed upon the customs-house service.
Moreover, the statistics of foreign commerce were confined
to a statement of the kinds, quantities, and values of articles
imported and exported, and to a classification of the tonnage
of vessels entering and clearing, at the ports of the United
States. As regards the internal commerce inquiries they
were much broader in scope, and the field was vastly more
extensive. It is true that the internal revenue service
provided a field force more or less available for the collec-
tion of certain data relating to domestic trade, but the data
available from this source were entirely inadequate to
provide a basis for any such statistical accounting for
domestic trade as had been developed through the customs-
house service for foreign commerce, or, it may be added,
for any such extension of the statistical accounting of the
Bureau of Statistics as seemed to be vaguely contemplated
in the Act of 1866.
Some efforts by the Bureau in the first years of its exist-
ence to extend its statistical accounting beyond the field of
foreign commerce have been noted, but precisely what was
wanted of the Bureau, and what could be effectively under-
taken, does not seem to have been clearly comprehended;
UNITED STATES 599
nor does any very definite scheme of procedure, except in
the way of rather large pretensions to be a general statistical
bureau, seem to have originated in the Bureau. A rather
vague conception, which was fairly justified by the pro-
visions of the law defining the functions of the Bureau, seems
to have been entertained, that the Bureau might properly
undertake any line of statistical inquiry which the Director
with the advice and consent of the Secretary of the Treasury
might consider desirable. In his first annual report the
Director enumerates forty foreign commerce tables "specifi-
cally enjoined in acts relating to the Bureau"; and forty
two other tables compiled by the Bureau, the implication
being that these latter tables were not specifically enjoined
by law. Among these were quarterly tables relating to
immigration, and deaths of immigrant passengers, and
annual compilations relating to population, railroads, wages,
cotton crop, transfers of real estate, credit, rates of interest,
and number of taxpayers. The Bureau also covered reports
from consuls, and foreign tariffs; had established a library;
developed a system of exchanges with the statistical bureaus
of other countries and of the states, and with several hun-
dred newspapers; and the Director expressed some disap-
pointment that he had not been able at the outset to " digest
and arrange the accounts rendered by the various offices of
the government," and "to obtain and publish statistics of
manufactures, mines, and other important industrial inter-
ests of our country." This, he explains, would be impracti-
cable for some time. A division of Manufactures and
Internal Traffic had, however, been established in the
Bureau.
The early monthly reports of the Bureau embrace tables
relating to the topics specified above, and in addition mis-
cellaneous tables relating to trade, population, production,
revenue and vital statistics of foreign countries. This com-
prehensive conception of the Bureau's functions outside the
domain of foreign commerce seems to have persisted for
some years. Mr. Young, in his annual report of 1872, states
600 MEMORIAL VOLUME
that he had occupied himself, while on a trip to St. Peters-
burg, as delegate to the International Statistical Congress,
"in investigating the cost and condition of labor in those
branches which compete with similar industries in the United
States," visiting, among a very cpnsiderable number of places
in several countries, the "renowned steel- works of Mr. Erupp
at Essen." His inquiries had embraced wages, cost of living,
and "the condition and habits of the working people as to
health, comfort, education and temperance." In his accoimt
of the year's work by the Bureau, he expressed belief that
it would be possible before long "from the data cheerfully
furnished during the past year by officers of railroads, in
response to circulars from this bureau ... to publish
valuable statistics of transportation."
Although Congress had, as yet, made no adequate pro-
vision for statistical accoimting in the field of domestic
trade, it persisted in its intention to secure data in that
field through the Treasury Bureau of Statistics, and in an
act approved March 3, 1875, it extended the functions of
that Bureau, if extension were possible, by requiring it to
report annually "statistics and facts" relating not only to
commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states,
but specifically to "the railroad systems of this and other
countries, the construction and operation of railroads, the
actual cost of transporting freights and passengers on rail-
roads, and on canals, rivers, and other navigable waters of
the United States, the charges imposed for such transporta-
tion of freight and passengers, and the tonnage transported."
Here was a large order for specific statistics, imposed
upon a comparatively small clerical force in the Treasury,
a force charged with the duty of compiling statistics of for-
eign commerce and navigation, and with the collection and
compilation of statistics of manufactures, and actually com-
prehending in its compilations a wide range of data not
specifically required by law. While in this case, as in the
case of the earlier act, no adequate provision was made for
achieving the large purposes legislatively defined, special
UNITED STATES 601
appropriations amounting in the early years to $5,000 were
from year to year made available during the years from
1875 to 1912. During this period the Bureau was gradually
relieved of some of its duties, which were transferred to
other agencies. Preparation of the statistics of railways,
for example, devolved upon the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission; of wages, upon the Bureau of Labor; of immi-
gration, upon the Immigration Service in the Treasury. In
1912 the compilation of data relating to internal commerce
was suspended in consequence of the failure of Congress to
continue the special appropriation for that work, although
the Bureau continued its oflfice records in the hope that the
appropriation might be renewed, and the continuity of the
tables preserved.
The first report of the Division of Internal Commerce* of
the Bureau of Statistics, that for the year 1876, is devoted
to an account of the principal railways, of railway traffic,
and of conditions affecting railway rates. "Statistical and
other information" had been furnished by "several gentle-
men well informed in regard to the commercial and trans-
portation interests of the country." The reports of these
"experts" occupy more than two hundred pages of fine
print. Their several reports as well as the main report are
descriptive and discursive, rather than statistical. In suc-
ceeding years, at irregular intervals, reports were issued
covering different sections of the country. The report of
1886, for example, treats of the commercial, industrial,
transportation, and other interests of ten Southern states,
each state being treated in a monographic section of the
report. In 1889 the states lying between the Mississippi
River and the Rocky Mountains were treated, and in 1890,
the Pacific Coast states and Alaska. The report of 1887
dealt with the commerce of the Ohio and of the Mississippi
Rivers and of the bridges across them; and the report of
1891 with the commerce of the Great Lakes.
*The Division of Manufactures and Internal Traffic, organized in 1868, had
lapsed. The Division of Internal Commerce was organized in 1875.
602 MEMORIAL VOLUME
In subsequent years the internal commerce monographs
and statistics were published in the Monthly Summary of
Commerce and Finance, which, during the years from 1876
to 1892, had been restricted practically to a statement of
imports and exports. During the nineties, the scope of the
data was somewhat extended. The monthly summaries
carried tables of prices of leading commodities, statistics of
cotton acreage and production, banking and clearing-house
returns, statistics of failures, and other data compiled from
private sources, besides a section of miscellaneous com-
mercial notes, and treasury statements of debt, currency,
and receipts and expenditures. In 1899, the Division hav-
ing this work in charge was reorganized and in July, 1900,
statistics of receipts and shipments of principal articles
transported on the Great Lakes, and entrances and clear-
ances of vessels at certain lake ports were shown.
In 1901 the monthly summary of internal commerce
data began to assume a more formal character in an exten-
sive field. The summary for January, 1901, is presented
under the following headings: geographical basis of in-
ternal commerce; surplus cereal movement; concentration
of the cotton crop; commercial live stock in the United
States; leading movements in the American coal trade;
the Lake Superior iron ore movements; geographical dis-
tribution of pig iron production; lumber statistics for 1900;
statistics of the Southern leaf -tobacco markets in 1900;
statistics of the Northern phosphate trade; statistics of the
New York milk trade for 1900; new railroad building in
1900; merchant ships built in 1900; commerce of the Great
Lakes. Statistics of trade between the United States and
its noncontiguous territory, procured under an act approved
April 29, 1902, were included in the monthly summary, and
in its annual Commerce and Navigation report statistics of
the merchandise entered and cleared coastwise at certain
ports. Referring to the internal commerce data in 1904,
the Chief of the Bureau stated that, although the data were
incomplete as regards any given article, "the main currents
UNITED STATES 60S
of internal commerce are being subjected to a more complete
statistical measurement," and that the degree of complete-
ness already attained in the work, which had been developed
along geographical lines, was such as to provide "fairly
approximate indexes to the comparative volume of com-
merce in each industry or section of the country." In the
1905 annual, the statement is made that, as regards the
coastwise and river trade, the information published by the
Bureau "must be regarded, at best, as only fragmentary,
and representing but an extremely small percentage of such
total movements." The data relating to internal commerce
was being procured "partly through the generous coopera-
tion of commercial organizations and transportation com-
panies, partly by compilations from authoritative trade pub-
lications, and to an increasing extent from oflB.cial reports
made by this and other departments of the public service."
Statistics of lake commerce were being compiled from sup-
plementary manifests reported through collectors of customs.
As finally developed in the Bureau, the internal commerce
data was presented each month under standing headings, in
tables which were cumulative by months, covering the cal-
endar year. The scope and character of the data may be
indicated by a brief description of the tables prepared for
the December Summary of 1911. The tables are grouped
in sections, as follows, although the detail of the tables can
be only partially indicated in a summary statement:
1. Commercial movements at interior centers, showing
receipts and shipments of live stock, grain, flour, produce,
and lumber, at principal markets, and wheat consumption
and flour output at Minneapolis, Duluth, and St. Paul.
2. Domestic commerce on the Great Lakes, showing
receipts and shipments of articles, and coastwise arrivals
and departures for principal lake ports, including data re-
ported from 247 receiving, and from 345 shipping points;
monthly inspections of grain into vessels at Chicago; com-
merce through the Sault Ste. Marie and other canals, cover-
ing vessels, passengers and freight.
604 MEMORIAL VOLTJME
3. Receipts and shipments at principal North Atlantic
seaports, covering live stock, flour, grain, and tobacco.
4. Coastwise commerce, covering coal shipments, re-
ceipts of lumber, and coastwise interchange of merchandise.
5. Lumber, naval stores, and general commodities, and
cotton ginned, consumed, held, and received in the South,
covering, for cotton data, 29 Southern interior points and
Gulf and Atlantic ports.
6. Pacific coast commerce and lumber shipments.
7. River and canal traflBc, including statistics of traffic,
ascending and descending, as reported from certain points
on the Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers; and of
traffic on the New York state and the Delaware and Chesa-
peake canals, and on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays —
these statistics being compiled generally from reports of en-
gineers of the War Department, in charge of river and harbor
improvements, and from state reports.
8. Statistics of coal mined, shipments by companies, and
receipts by rail and sea at certain points; bunker coal sup-
plied; production of pig iron; stock of petroleum, run from
wells and deliveries by pipe line companies.
9. Ocean freight rates on articles, as reported from cer-
tain ports.
These statistics, originating largely in such sources as rail-
road reports, reports of boards of trade, of chambers of com-
merce, of fruit, cotton, and produce exchanges, of state grain
inspectors, of trade organizations, of manufacturers, of mari-
time and stock yard associations, of the Associated Press
Ship News Department, and of harbor masters, were com-
posed in a monthly statement of some forty pages, and were
regarded by the Bureau as constituting a "monthly barom-
eter of our domestic commerce." Since the suspension of
this service in 1912, there has been "no publication, either
official or private, which shows the movements of vessels
and commodities in the domestic trade on the Great Lakes
and the rivers and canals of the United States; the grain,
live stock, and cotton movements to and from the principal
UNITED STATES 605
markets; the coastwise commerce; the lake and ocean
freight rates," and it is urged that, "in view of the increased
coastwise commerce in recent years, the opening of the
Panama Canal and the agitation of an inland waterway
along the Atlantic Coast and for improvement of internal
water transportation routes, it is especially important that
this work shall be again taken up."
Statistics of Railways. — In his first report as statistician
to the Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1888, Mr. Adams
notes that there were at that time three federal bureaus
charged with the "collection and pubhcation of facts relat-
ing to internal commerce," twenty five state railway com-
missions, or bureaus endowed with power "to inquire into
the affair^ of the roads," and three taxing commissions,
besides officials in certain states exercising somewhat similar
powers, and he observes that "it does not seem to be the
intention of the various legislative bodies that the corporeal
management of internal commerce should be hid from public
scrutiny." According to the first statistical report of the
Commission, there were in the United States nearly 1,500
companies, representing 150,000 miles of line, and property
value based upon this mileage exceeded $8,000,000,000;
annual gross earnings and income aggregated $1,000,000,000;
passenger mileage, 10,500,000,000 miles; ton mileage,
60,000,000,000 miles.
The restricted jurisdiction of state agencies was clearly
incompetent to embrace these immense interests, which in
their development and operation did not recognize state
boundaries. Prior to the passage of the act to regulate
commerce, approved February 4, 1887, statistics relating
to land grant roads had been collected in the Interior De-
partment; the Treasiu-y Bureau of Statistics had compiled
general information and some statistical data relating to rail-
ways; and the Census Office had covered the transporta-
tion agencies in its decennial reports; but no agency had
been created in the federal government, endowed with pow-
ers of requisitioning information, such as were at all com-
606 MEMORIAL VOLUME
parable to those conferred by the Act of 1887 upon the Inter-
state Commerce Commission. This act, which initiated the
annual collection and compilation of national statistics of
railways in the United States, clearly contemplated and
authorized a statistical service, the development of which
to the complete realization of the intention of the original
statute, has occupied the Commission for more than a
quarter of a century. The authority clearly granted was so
considerable that the Commission, in the careful extension
of its activities from year to year, has only gradually ap-
proached in its statistical service the full exercise of its au-
thority, and in amendatory and other acts Congress has
manifested a persistent disposition to extend the scope of
the Commission's activities, even beyond the limits which
the Commission itself would have preferred to observe.
Common carriers subject to the Act of 1887, to regulate
commerce, were required to file with the Commission copies
of tariffs and of all contracts or agreements; to make annual
reports at such time and in such manner as the Commission
should prescribe; and further to give "specific answers to
all questions upon which the Commission may need infor-
mation."
While leaving the Commission free to determine the form
of the annual reports, the act itself specifically required that
these reports should show certain detail. The section pro-
viding for this detail reads, in part, as follows:
Such annual reports shall show in detail the amount of capital stock issued, the
amounts paid therefor, and the manner of payment for the same; the dividends
paid, the surplus fund, if any, and the number of stockholders; the funded and
floating debts and the interest paid thereon; the cost and value of the carrier's
property, franchises and equipment; the number of employes, and the salaries paid
each class; the amounts expended for improvements each year, how expended, and
the character of such improvements; the earnings and receipts from each branch
of business, and from all soiurces; the operating and other expenses; the balances of
profit and loss; and a complete exhibit of the financial operations of the carrier each
year, including an annual balance sheet. Such reports shall also contain such
information in relation to rates or regulations concerning fares or freights, or agree-
ments, arrangements, or contracts with other common carriers, as the Commission
may require.
UNITED STATES 607
Finally the Commission is authorized to prescribe, within
its discretion, a uniform system of accoimts, and the manner
in which such accounts shall be kept by the railroads.
The Commission organized March 31, 1887, and imme-
diately proceeded to initiate its statistical work. After a
public hearing before the Commission, and extended con-
ference and correspondence with railroad accountants and
state commissioners, a form for the annual reports was pre-
pared. This form was submitted to a meeting of Railway
Accounting Officers, held in Washington during March, 1888,
and the blanks as finally determined upon were distributed
to the carriers in Jime. In the year following, this form was
submitted for further revision to a committee representing
in its membership state commissions, the Association of
American Railway Accounting Officers, and the Interstate
Commerce Commission. In general, the annual reports, as
originally defined, were made to embrace detail relating to
the organization, physical property, finances, and intercor-
porate relationships of railways.*
In general scope the original forms provided, upon which
the railways were required to make their annual statement
to the Commission, comprehended fairly the whole range of
inquiries upon which they have been directed to make return
annually in succeeding years — ^the development in succeed-
ing years being mainly consequent upon elaboration of detail,
and definition of terms used in the inquiries. To a very
considerable extent, in fact, the statistical work of the Com-
mission, for more than two and a half decades, is summed up
in its persistent and successful effort to define and standardize
*The fonn embraced inquiries covering specifically the following topics: History;
organization; officers; property operated; capital stock; funded debt; floating debt
and current liabilities; permanent improvements; cost of road and equipment;
income account; earnings from operation; bonds owned; stocks owned and mis-
cellaneous income; operating expenses; rentals paid; general balance sheet; financial
operations; important changes; contracts, etc.; security for funded debt; employes
and salaries; passenger, freight, and train mileage; freight traffic movement; equip-
ment; mileage operated; renewals; fuel consumption; and characteristics of road.
608 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the terms used in its inquiries. The elaboration of detail has
been mainly definition rather than extension of inquiries.
Mr. Adams, in his first report, remarks that there were at
the time the Commission was organized "about as many
systems of accounts in the United States as there were rail-
way managements," and he points out that state commis-
sions generally had avoided the problem of compiling the
data which they collected "by pubhshing in detail the returns
of each road exactly as each road submitted them." As re-
gards the statistical work of the Commission, he conceived
its purpose to be "to mass those details" into significant
totals. This clearly involved an analysis and standardiza-
tion of railroad accounting.
The preparation of the annual report form was only a first
step. It introduced a uniform fiscal year, ending June 30,
as the year to be covered by the data returned, and it indi-
cated the scope of the inquiries which the Commission, under
section 20 of the law of 1887, proposed to institute. But
under the diverse practices of railroad accounting, standard-
ization of inquiries did not insure, in any considerable degree,
comparability of data. There was probably no single sta-
tistical inquiry on the schedule sent out to the carriers, which
was not susceptible of, and, in fact certain to encounter, a
bewildering diversity of interpretation in the different offices.
This was true even of such simple inquiries as that calling for
a return of miles of line, ton-mileage, and passenger-mileage.
In developing a uniform system of accounting which
would produce data susceptible of compilation, the Commis-
sion has worked in close cooperation with state railroad com-
missioners and with railway accounting officers. The Na-
tional Association of Railway Commissioners has proposed
to the Commission that it organize a bureau of correspond-
ence charged with the special duty of securing the adoption
of imiform methods.* Its practice has been further to
secure the services of experts and the cooperation of the
carriers to the full extent possible, in preparing the classi-
*Tweiity first Annual Report, 1907.
UNITED STATES 609
fications which have been made effective from time to time
as completed.
Under an act approved June 29, 1906, which specifically
authorized the Commission to prescribe, and at the same
time granted adequate powers to enforce, uniform account-
ing by all carriers subject to the law, the Commission pro-
ceeded to revise its classifications, and to develop a system
of accounting which should represent "the crystalKzation of
the view of all who, from experience or study, have a right
to an opinion on so intricate a subject." The Association
of American Railway Accounting OflBcers appointed a com-
mittee of twenty five to cooperate with the Commission;
circulars were issued by the Commission calling for informa-
tion on a number of accounting problems, and a series of
conferences extended over ten months. On June 3, 1907,
accounting rules were issued covering operating expenses,
operating revenues, and expenditures for road and equip-
ment (except in the case of electric railways), and a general
system of accounting for carriers was completed with the
orders promulgating certain classifications on June 21, 1909.
In its report for that year the Commission states that "the
accounting orders of the Commission, whether for steam
railways, electric railways, express companies, or other trans-
portation agencies engaged in both state and interstate
business, have, without exception, been accepted by the
state railroad commissioners"; * that the forms of annual
reports are essentially the same. A resolution of the Na-
tional Association of Railway Commissioners is cited, which
was calculated to "make the reports of carriers to the states,
the complement of, rather than the duplicate of, the report
rendered by the same carriers to the federal governraent,"
by making, for example, iu the state reports, a special feature
of state tonnage. This suggests a principle of organization
and cooperation for statistical work of the federal govern-
ment and the states which might with advantage, it would
seem, be extended to other lines of inquiry.
"Twenty third Annual Report, p. 57.
40
610 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Throughout this work the Commission has acted in accord-
ance with its own expressed conviction that "the best fruit
of correct accounting is correct statistics, and without
correct accounting . . . it is not possible to arrive at
satisfactory statistical results."* The classifications which
have been made eflFective for steam railways embrace operat-
ing revenues; operating expenses; expenditures for road and
equipment; expenditures for additions and betterments;
revenues and expenses for outside operations; locomotive-
miles, car-miles, and train-miles; general balance-sheet state-
ment, and income and profit and loss statement. Similarly,
classifications have been made effective covering the account-
ing of electric railways, express companies, pipe line com-
panies, sleeping car companies, carriers by water, telephone
companies, and telegraph and cable companies. These
classifications, as they have become effective, have imposed
upon all carriers subject to the jurisdiction of the Commis-
sion, a uniform system of accounting, adapted to the char-
acter of the carriers' operations, and it is this uniformity of
accounting which gives value to the statistics compiled by
the Commission. In 1912 the Commission issued a bulletin
containing more than five hundred decisions, made in its
Division of Carriers' Accounts, of questions which had
arisen in the interpretation of its classifications, and these
were made effective on July 1, 1912, by order of the Com-
mission. As a guarantee that the classifications are ob-
served, the accounts and operations of individual carriers
are examined by the Commission's expert accountants, as
extensively as the funds available for this work permit,
general and special examinations of carriers' accounts being
one function of the Division of Carriers' Accounts.
The jurisdiction of the Federal Commission is restricted
to carriers engaged in interstate commerce, but through
cooperation of state commissions, its classifications and
report forms have been extended generally to intrastate
commerce. In the Seventh Annual Report of the Commis-
* Twentieth Annual Report, 1906, pp. 61-62.
UNITED STATES 611
sion in 1893, the statement is made that the Commission's
Annual Report form had been adopted by twenty two states.
It may be noted that coiiperation is absolutely essential as
a condition of any effective statistical work in the case of
such carriers as electric urban and interurban railways.
This will be apparent from the fact that not more than one
fifth of these companies were subject to the jurisdiction of
the Interstate Commerce Commission when its authority
was extended to cover carriers of this class. It is partly in
consequence of this cooperation that the Commission's Sta-
tistics of Railways at the present time represent returns
which " cover intrastate commerce, as well as interstate and
foreign commerce; and with very few exceptions . . .
the entire business of all the larger corporations reporting." *
The extension of the Commission's jurisdiction over car-
riers other than steam railways engaged in interstate com-
merce, has been, at least in part, an extension involved in
the original act to regulate commerce. In the recommenda-
tions to Congress included in the early reports of the Com-
mission, it is urged that express companies, or carrying
agencies doing a transportation business in connection with
railways, companies owning connecting or terminal facilities,
and corporations and companies furnishing rolling stock to
railways be required to report, and that transportation on the
Great Lakes and the coasting and river traflSc "be brought
under the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission,
so far at least as statistics are concemed."t In extending
its authority over the field of accounting for common car-
riers, to make its statistics of transportation "complete and
comprehensive," the Commission has been under an em-
barrassment not dissimilar to that of the traditional landlord
.who would annex to his estate all adjoining property.
Under the original act to regulate commerce the Com-
mission was given certain authority over water-line carriers,
where these carriers engaged in interstate commerce jointly
* Twenty sixth Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways, p. 7.
t Fifth Annual Report, 1891, p. 9.
612 MEMORIAL VOLUME
with railways. But it was apparent to the Commission from
the beginning that the business of express companies, and of
independent car-owning companies, constituted important
branches of the business of transporting commodities by
rail, which must be taken into account in regulating freight
rates. Also it was generally recognized that the competition
of^water-line carriers, independently of the prorating of
through traffic charges, constituted an important condition
affecting rail rates. At a later period the development of
electric interurban service in transporting freight and passen-
gers seemed to require an extension of the Commission's
authority to embrace electric railways; and when it was
determined to extend federal control over the telephone and
the telegraph and cable companies, it was natural that the
work of devising a system of accounts for these companies
should be entrusted to that federal agency which had built
up elaborate systems of accounting for several classes of
carriers. When, finally, the Post Office Department devel-
oped a parcel post service, it seemed quite the natural pro-
cedure for Congress to require that Department to submit to
the Commission any changes in rates which it might propose
to make — ^an extension of its authority, it may be noted,
which the Commission felt to be somewhat embarrassing, in
view of its relations to private express companies.
Perhaps in no line of federal statistical work is the com-
pilation of data more clearly inspired with administrative
piurpose, than it .is in the work of the Interstate Commerce
Commission. The data are collected and compiled "in
order to give to the Commission the information essential
to a just opinion respecting a discrimination of rates," and
"to create a condition in which such evidences as will insure
the ^conviction of a carrier who violates the law may be
obtained easily and in abundance." It is felt that evidence
upon which to base a just opinion can not be gotten together
on the occasion of a complaint to the Commission, but that
it must accumulate from year to year in the Commission's
files, and be available as impartial evidence on occasion of
UNITED STATES 61S
any issue raised, for shippers and carriers as well as for the
Commission itself.
No detailed account of the statistical compilations based
upon the returns made by carriers is required to indicate the
character of the statistical work of the Interstate Commerce
Commission. The statistics published are essentially^ac-
counting statistics, but it should not be inferred from this,
that the data published by the Commission are in the nature
of bookkeeping statements. The Commission has con-
sistently maintained that the accounting by carriers must
truly represent in detail their operations, and their condition,
and the accountant or official making oath to the return sent
in, is responsible to the Commission for the accuracy of his
statements, which must be composed in accordance with the
accounting rules of the Commission. He is in a sense an
agent of the Commission. His accounting is essentially and
primarily an accounting to the Commission, rather than to
the corporation, and he may not under any conditions keep
any other accounts than those specified by the Commission.
The importance of correct accounting as a basis of accurate
statistics is illustrated by the establishment in the classifica-
tions prepared under the Act of June 29, 1906, of deprecia-
tion accounts for carriers, so constructed as to define clearly
the income statement of profit and loss; and more recently
in the initiation, under the Act of March 1, 1913, of the
physical valuation of railways. For many years prior to
1913, the Commission had repeatedly urged upon Congress
that provision should be made for undertaking this immense
task, basing its recommendations always upon the ground
that no correct balance sheet of assets and liabilities, and no
significant statement of earnings upon investments could be
made up for carriers until a complete inventory of their prop-
erty had been consummated. This great enterprise is
essentially an accounting proposition; it is one phase of the
eflFort to define a criterion by which to judge of the reason-
ableness of rates; and it indicates the broad statistical scope
given to principles of accounting in the Commission's work.
614 MEMORIAL VOLUME
It would perhaps be a correct statement to say that the
essential purpose of the whole system of accounting devised
and promulgated by the Commission is statistical.
Statistics of Corporations other than Banks and Common
Carriers. — The creation of an executive agency in the federal
government charged with the duty of making "diligent
investigation into the organization, conduct, and manage-
ment" of corporations, joint stock companies and corporate
combinations, other than common carriers and banks, and
of gathering "such information and data as will enable the
President of the United States to make recommendations to
Congress for legislation for the regulation of such commerce,"
was a tentative and partial extension of the policy which had
been adopted with reference to common carriers in the Act
of 1887 to regulate commerce. This extension is associated
with that "pubhc concern which developed in the late nine-
ties over the rapid growth of industrial consolidations," *
and it was a natural complement of the Sherman anti-trust
law of 1890. Neither the act to regulate commerce nor the
anti-trust act had been eflfective in preventing imfair prac-
tices in restraint of trade, and Congress seems to have felt
that it had not a sufficient basis of fact upon which to pro-
ceed in formulating legislation which should more effectively
regulate interstate commerce. Ten years before the estab-
lishment of the Bureau of Corporations, Justice Harlan had
declared that the need of an administrative agency for col-
lecting information and for enforcing the Sherman law was
obvious, in the following words:
All must recognize the fact that the full information necessary as a basis of
intelligent legislation by Congress from time to time upon the subject of interstate
commerce can not be obtained, nor can the rules established for the regulation of
such commerce be efficiently enforced otherwise than through the instrumentality
of an administrative body representing the whole country, always watchful of the
general interests, and charged with the duty, not only of obtaining the required
information, but of compelling, by all lawful methods, obedience to such rules, f
•Report of the Commission of Corporations for the year ending June 30, 1912.
t Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U. S., 474 (1898), quoted by
the Commissioner of Corporations, in his report for 1914. The Commissioner notes.
UNITED STATES 615
Section 6 of the organic act, approved February 14, 1903,
establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor,
created in that Department a Bureau of Corporations, to be
under the direction of a Commissioner, who should exercise,
with reference to corporations, joint stock companies and
combinations, other than common carriers and banks, "the
same power and authority ... as is conferred upon
the Interstate Commerce Commission," with reference to
common carriers, in the act to regulate commerce and the
acts amendatory thereto, " so far as the same may be appli-
cable, including the right to subpoena and compel the at-
tendance and testim6ny of witnesses and the production of
documentary evidence." It is further declared to be the
province and duty of the new bureau "to gather, compile,
publish, and supply useful information concerning corpora-
tions" engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, or in
insurance. The Bureau was thus given the character of a
legislative research bureau, charged with the duty of making
such investigations as Congress might direct, and authorized
to institute of its own initiative such inquiries as would pro-
duce data that would enable the President to recommend
legislation.
In his first annual report. Commissioner Garfield notes
that the powers of the Bureau are "described largely by
reference to those of the Interstate Commerce Commission,"
as being apparently the earliest suggestion "for the establishment of a federal
administrative organ to supervise corporations, that made by Hon. Francis G.
Newlands in a letter to the Chicago Conference on Trusts in 1889, "that a federal
bureau similar to the office of the Comptroller of the Currency should be established,
which shoidd receive reports from all corporations and act as an organ of publicity
and supply information for the guidance of legislation." The recommendation
of the Industrial Commission in its Final Report of February 10, 1902, is noted,
also, "that there be created in the Treasury Department a permanent bureau, the
duties of which shall be to register all state corporations engaged in interstate or
foreign commerce"; to secure reports, make inspections of business accounts, to
enforce penalties, and to collate and publish information; and the recommendation
of Attorney-General Knox, in a communication to the Senate Judiciary Com-
mittee, dated January 3, 1903, that there be established a commission with powers
quite similar to those subsequently conferred upon the Bureau of Corporations by
the Act of February 14, 1903.
616 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and states that "the chief difference between the two admin-
istrative bodies is that while information is collected by the
Interstate Commerce Commission mainly for the purpose of
enforcing a law, the information to be collected by the
Bureau of Corporations is to be used for the purpose of
making law." Throughout the entire period of its existence,
the Bureau consistently conformed its activities to this
definition of its function. It is nevertheless true that the
information and data compiled in the Bureau's reports to the
President were used not only as a basis upon which to for-
mulate recommendations to Congress, but also extensively as
a basis of fact upon which the Attorney-General proceeded
to institute criminal and dissolution suits against certain
large combinations. The Bureau thus became indirectly
and incidentally, an important agency in the enforcement
of both the act to regulate commerce and the anti-trust acts.
This double function as a bureau of information to Con-
gress and to the Attorney-General, is fairly illustrated by the
utilization of the report on the transportation of petroleum.
In transmitting the first portion of this report to Congress,
on May 4, 1906, President Roosevelt declared it to be "of
capital importance in view of the effort now being made to
secure such enlargement of the powers of the Interstate
Commerce Commission as will confer upon the Commission
power in some measure adequately to meet the clearly
demonstrated needs of the situation." These powers were
in fact enlarged in the Act of June 29 following, and the
Bureau's report was very pertinent to that piece of legisla-
tion. On the other hand, on the basis of the information
gathered in the course of this investigation, various grand
juries returned indictments containing over eight thousand
counts for offenses against the Elkins law.
Other reports prepared by the Bureau have had equally
important consequences. These reports embrace the results
of investigations extending in each case over a series of
years, covering the beef industry, the petroleum industry,
the tobacco industry, the steel industry, the lumber industry.
UNITED STATES 617
and the farm machinery industry; besides reports on cotton
exchanges, on the taxation of corporations, on state laws
concerning foreign corporations, on trust legislation, on trans-
portation by water, and on water power development. Each
report represents extensive field work in the collection of data
and information, and in nearly every case the reports em-
brace the results of statistical compilations in the Bureau of a
mass of data collected by agents in the field — ^the policy of
the Bureau being to publish the results of its compilations
rather than the data which these compilations represent.
The extent to which, in the case of any given report, the
work of the Bureau is statistical in character, is determined
entirely by the nature of the inquiry. Statistics are "com-
piled and published only for the purpose of properly present-
ing the special problems with which the Bureau is dealing."
These problems are, however, of a character to require a
large amount of purely statistical work. The report on the
beef industry, for example, deals, among other topics, with
the capitalization of the large packing companies, the pro-
portion of the business controlled by certain companies, the
prices of cattle and of dressed beef, and the profits of the
industry. It will be clear that the basis of report on these
subjects must be purely statistical. Part II of the report
on the petroleum industry contains over one thousand pages,
and is devoted entirely to prices, costs, and profits in the
industry. Part IV of the report on cotton exchanges is
devoted to a discussion of the effect of future contracts on
prices of cotton. Part II of the report on the tobacco indus-
try presents data relating to the capitalization, investment
and earnings of the several companies covered by the
inquiry, while Part III covers prices, costs and profits.
Part in of the report on the steel industry represents an
investigation of cost of production in the industry, the
cost at the time of the inquiry being compared with cost in
earlier years. The report on the lumber industry contains
chapters on concentration of ownership, on the supply of
standing timber, the acreage of timber holdings, and the
618 MEMORIAL VOLUME
value of standing timber. The statistics contained in all of
these reports represent compilations of original data collected
in the field by the Bureau's experts.
The more important investigations of the Bureau have
generally been instituted pursuant to Congressional orders,
but the scope given to the investigations has not been re-
stricted to the limits contemplated in these orders. In the
oil investigation, for example, the Bureau was directed in a
House resolution of February 15, 1905, to investigate condi-
tions in the Kansas oil field. Some study of the oil industry
had already been made in the Bureau, and the Commissioner
felt that conditions obtaining in the Kansas area could not
be fairly set forth independently of conditions in other areas.
Accordingly a comprehensive scope was given to the investi-
gations. A statement of the cost of various investigations
conducted by the Bureau, included in the Commissioner's
report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, shows that
expenditures on account of the oil investigations began in
the fiscal year 1903-4 ; a report on transportation of petro-
leum was issued in May, 1906; Part I of the report on the
petroleum industry was issued in May, 1907, and Part II
in August of the same year; and total expenditures on
account of the oil investigation to Jime 30, 1914, aggregated
$144,900, of which $62,073 represented field work. The
report of the investigation of the beef industry, under a
House resolution of March 18, 1904, was issued in March,
1905, the total cost of the inquiry being given as $43,461.
Considerable expenditures on account of the lumber investi-
gation began in the fiscal year 1906-7; Part I of the report on
the lumber industry was issued January 20, 1913; Parts II,
HI, and IV in the first half of 1914 ; expenditures on account
of this inquiry to June 30, 1914, aggregated $382,322, of
which $168,458 represented field work. Expenditures on
accoimt of the tobacco investigation began in 1903-4; Part I
of the report on the tobacco industry was issued in February,
1909; Part H, in September, 1911; total expenditures to
June 30, 1914, amounted to $140,795. The steel investiga-
UNITED STATES 619
tion began in 1903-4; Part I of the report on the steel indus-
try was issued in July, 1911; a preliminary report on the cost
of production of steel, in January, 1912, and the full report
on cost of production in May, 1913. Total expenditures
to June 30, 1914, on account of the steel investigation
amounted to $110,995. The International Harvester Com-
pany and farm machinery associations investigation began
in the fiscal year 1906-7; the report on the International
Harvester Company was issued March 3, 1913; expenditures
on account of this investigation amounted to $106,182. In-
vestigation of water and canal transportation began in
1905-6; Parts I and II of the report on transportation by
water was issued in July, 1909, Part III in September, 1910,
and Part IV, in December, 1912; expenditures amounted to
$118,783. Total expenditures on account of all its various
investigations, to June 30, 1914, aggregated $1,921,453.
On March 1, 1913, the Bureau was ordered by Congress
to investigate the causes of the advance in price of amoni-
ates used in the manufacture of commercial fertilizers; on
May 27, "to inquire fuUy as to the names of the party or
parties or corporations that sold cotton alleged to have been
bought in the year 1910 by a pool of piu-chasers who are now
under indictment by the Department of Justice, and at what
prices these parties sold this cotton to the alleged pool, and
whether or not the parties selling this cotton owned the
cotton at the time of the sale thereof"; on June 18, to inves-
tigate the price of oil in Oklahoma transported by interstate
pipe lines. The Commissioner reports as new work xmder-
taken in fiscal years 1913 and 1914 an investigation to deter-
mine whether "the trust form of organization is really
efficient," and, if so, to what extent such organizations
"absorb all the benefits" of such economies as are effected,
"in increased profits without conceding any share thereof to
labor in higher wages, or to consumers in relatively lower
prices or improved quality of goods, etc." The Bureau was
also undertaking an inquiry into the economic advantages and
disadvantages of resale price maintenance by manufacturers.
620 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and at the same time was continuing its investigation, legal
rather than statistical, of state systems of taxation of cor-
porations, and initiating an inquiry into the conflict of state
corporation laws, and into proposed reforms and remedies
in trust legislation.
In his report for the fiscal year 1913, the Secretary of Com-
merce asks for a very substantial increase — ^from $253,300
in 1914 to $685,000 in 1915 — in the appropriation for the
Bureau of Corporations, the iacrease being requested largely
to enable the Bureau to "undertake a study of certain
fundamental economic laws on which all our industries are
based," determine the efficiency of the "trust" form of
organization, and whether "bigness and bulk are always
necessary to production at the lowest cost" — ^to determine
"whether these bulky things that we have so much feared
are in an economic sense real giants in strength or whether
they are but images with feet of clay."
Although the powers of the Bureau of Corporations were
defined in the organic act largely by reference to the act to
regulate commerce, under which the Interstate Commerce
Commission was authorized to require annual as well as
special reports from common carriers, the Bureau of Corpor-
ations, did not attempt to obtain such reports. It is not
clear what exception could have been taken to its position, if
it had asserted in the beginning that a necessary and proper
means of "diligent investigation into the organization, con-
duct, and management of the business" of corporations was
the submission of regular reports by these corporations.
In their annual reports, however, the Commissioners re-
peatedly lu-ged upon Congress the necessity of legislation
which should bring industrial associations engaged in inter-
state and foreign commerce under federal control, by provid-
ing for either incorporation or licensing of such organiza-
tions by the federal government. It is pointed out that the
power of Congress to prohibit any corporations from engag-
ing in interstate or foreign commerce, except in conformity
to such regulations as Congress may prescribe, is plenary.
UNITED STATEiS 621
and that such regulations might include the requirement of
regular reports to a federal bureau. In the report for 1911
the Commissioner insists upon the necessity for an adminis-
trative system "having broad power of investigation, taking
continuous cognizance of the operations of large industrial
corporations," and he points out that after the disintegra-
tion of the American Tobacco Company and the Standard
Oil Company, the country had in fact "no effective means
of ascertaining how far the desired reform will be carried
out." Public interest required "that these two groups of
companies, and any others in like circumstances, should be
at once obliged by law to submit to constant inspection by a
federal office." In the Commissioner's report for the fol-
lowing year, after enumerating the beneficial results of the
Bureau's work in past years, in providing a basis for con-
structive legislation, in furthering judicial proceedings, and
in achieving through eflfective publicity the voluntary
abandonment by large corporations of improper and imlaw-
ful practices, it is pointed out that the method of investiga-
tion imposed by law upon the Bureau was "tedious and
laborious," and characterized by a lack of standardization
of inquiries. The Commissioner expresses the following
opinion:
Had there been provision for the automatic submission to the Bureau of even
elementary data as to the organization, capitalization, business and profits of the
larger interstate corporations, a great saving in labor, time and expense might have
been effected. Up to the present time the Bureau has been essentially one of in-
vestigation and not one of record. It would appear that the time has arrived when
the latter function might be carried along without detriment to the former. The
regular submission and compilation of essential facts relating to the affairs of the
principal corporations engaged in interstate trade would bi-ing about a very con-
siderable measiu-e of publicity with comparatively little expense.*
It is certainly remarkable that, in the face of conclusive
and voluminous evidence that corporations engaged in inter-
state commerce were violating the anti-trust laws, and
were coming to occupy a strategic position with reference
'Report for year ending June SO, 1912, p. 10.
622 MEMORIAL VOLUME
to common carriers which enabled them to interfere with
the enforcement of the act to regulate commerce, more than
a decade should have elapsed before provision for the re-
quirement of regular reports to a federal agency by asso-
ciations engaged in interstate commerce was incorporated
in a statute.
This provision has been made in the Act of September 26,
1914, establishing the Federal Trade Commission. Under
this act all pending investigations of the Bureau of Corpora-
tions, together with its employees, records and appropriations
are transferred to the new Commission, which is "empowered
and directed to prevent persons, partnerships, or corpora-
tions, except banks, and common carriers subject to the
acts to regulate commerce, from using unfair methods of
competition." The Commission is given the authority
"to require, by general or special orders, corporations en-
gaged in commerce (excepting banks and common carriers),
or any class of them, or any of them, respectively, to file
with the Commission in such form as the Commission may
prescribe annual or special, or both annual and special,
reports or answers in writing to specific questions, furnishing
to the Commission such information as it may require as to
organization, business, conduct, practices, management, and
relation to other corporations, partnerships, and individuals
of the respective corporations filing such reports or answers
in writing."
These reports are to be made imder oath or otherwise,
and must be filed within a reasonable period, as the Com-
mission may prescribe. The Commission may further in-
vestigate trade conditions in foreign coimtries, where asso-
ciations or practices may affect the foreign trade of the
United States. It may make pubhc such information as
it deems expedient to publish, and make annual and special
reports to Congress. Diverse duties in connection with the
enforcement of the anti-trust acts are also imposed upon the
UNITED STATES 623
Commission.* In this act and in the Clayton act, approved
October 15, 1914, Congress seems to have provided for the
exercise of executive and quasi-judicial powers by the Trade
Commission similar to those which have been exercised
by the Interstate Commerce Commission for more than a
quarter of a century.
The Clayton act declares certain practices unlawful —
embracing certain methods of competition, price discrimina-
tions, contracting to control sale, intercorporate stock
ownership, and interlocking directorates — and vests author-
ity to enforce its provisions in the Federal Trade Commis-
sion. It may fairly be expected that eventually under
these laws the records of the Trade Commission will con-
stitute a fund of statistical information entirely comparable
in social and economic value to the records of common
carriers.
It has been suggested that some of the non-judicial powers
vested in the Interstate Commerce Commission, including
those exercised in the collection of statistics of carriers under
its judicial control, might properly have been transferred
to the Bureau of Corporations, upon the organization of that
bureau, in compliance with the principle of separation of
judicial and administrative functions. Mr. H. T. Newcomb,
for example, in an article contributed to the North American
Review of October, 1909, urges "the propriety of utilizing
it (the Bureau of Corporations) as an agency for performing
the statistical work, for conducting the non-judicial investi-
gations concerning interstate railway commerce and for
exercising the actually administrative powers" incident to the
* The Commission may of its own initiative, and shall upon application of the
Attorney-General, investigate the extent to which court decrees entered against
defendants in suits brought by the United States to prevent and restrain violations
of the anti-trust acts are being complied with, and report its findings to the Attorney-
General; it may be directed by the President or Congress to investigate alleged
violations of the anti-trust acts; the Attorney-General may request it to recommend
readjustments to comply with the law for corporations alleged to be violating the
law; it may be requested to formulate decrees in anti-trust suits as a master in chan-
ceiy.
624 MEMORIAL VOLUME
regulation of carriers, and expresses the opinion that the
Bureau of Corporations had not achieved the full measure
of its utility because of the exclusion of carriers from its
purview. Such an arrangement of the statistical work would
relieve the Interstate Commerce Commission of functions
somewhat inconsistent with its judicial character, and would
avoid a distinction which as regards statistical work, and
even as regards administrative control and economic condi-
tions, is essentially artificial and somewhat illogical, namely,
the separation of corporations engaged in interstate com-
merce into common carriers (including, with steam and
electric railways, telephone, telegraph, and express com-
panies), on the one hand, and on the other interstate com-
merce corporations (not carriers). Since, however, the
Federal Trade Commission seems authorized under the
recent legislation to exercise quasi-judicial functions similar
to those exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission,
a more consistent arrangement of the statistical work, on
the principle that this work should not be done by a judicial
body, might be to consolidate the accounting and statistical
work relating to interstate commerce corporations, including
carriers, in an agency entirely independent of the two quasi-
judicial commissions. The accounting and statistical data
gathered by an independent agency would have, perhaps to
a somewhat greater degree than under the present arrange-
ment, the appearance of being impartial evidence in cases
brought before the judicial bodies. In the past, interstate
corporations have been so intimately linked together by
interlocking directorates, stock ownership and contractual
agreements, that the accounting of any one of the greater
corporations has involved a great diversity of interests.
These great plexuses of industry and commerce do not in
the scope of their interests recognize any abstract principle
of classification, and some of the most serious problems of
regulation arise in the very fact of centralized control of
diverse interests, in aggregations of capital which can not
be simply defined as carriers and not-carriers. It is this
UNITED STATES 625
very diversity and extent of functions, it would seem, which
might properly be made the subject of regular open account-
ing and statistical report, by some federal agency unem-
barrassed by legal distinctions which do not obtain in fact,
and which are not likely to effect, even if that be the inten-
tion of the law, any complete disintegration of intercorporate
relations.
Statistics of Foreign Markets. — It is significant of the
vagrancy of certain bureau functions, and of the anomalous
nomenclature which by the accident of historical develop-
ment has been imposed upon government bureaus, that, in
the account of the statistics of foreign commerce, no occa-
sion arose to refer to the work of the Bureau of Foreign Com-
merce in the Department of State; that this bureau, origi-
nally the Bureau of Statistics in the State Department,
after having its name changed to "Bureau of Foreign Com-
merce," should have been transferred to the Department of
Commerce and Labor and merged in the Bureau of Statistics,
brought in coincidently from the Treasury Department;
that the functions carried to the Bureau of Statistics by the
Bureau of Foreign Commerce should have been transferred
subsequently by instalments to the Bureau of Manufactures;
that the Bureau of Manufactures should have dealt entirely
with foreign markets and the promotion of foreign trade;
that it should eventually have absorbed the Bureau of
Statistics which, as the Bureau of Statistics, had for years
been occupied with foreign and domestic commerce; and that
Congress should designate the merger of Manufactures and
Statistics, the "Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce,"
and should, in the same year that it for the first time gave
statutory recognition to Domestic Commerce in the official
designation of a bureau, refuse to continue the appropriation
of long standing providing for the collection annually of
data relating to domestic commerce.
Those functions of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic
Commerce, which it acquired by merger from the Bureau
of Statistics, have been considered in the account of foreign
41
626 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and of domestic commerce statistics — its functions as regards
domestic commerce being legally competent, but adminis-
tratively latent. It remains to consider those of its func-
tions which it acquired indirectly from the old Bureau of
Foreign Commerce, and directly from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics and those which were conferred upon it by the
organic Act of February 14, 1903. This act provides, with
reference to the Bureau of Manufactures, that:
It shall be the province and duty of said Bureau, under the direction of the
Secretary, to foster, promote, and develop the various manufacturing industries of
the United States, and markets for the same at home and abroad, domestic and
foreign, by gathering, compiling, publishing and supplying all available and useful
information concerning such industries and such markets, and by such other methods
and means as may be prescribed by the Secretary or provided by law. And all
consular officers of the United States, including consuls-general, consuls, and com-
mercial agents, are hereby required, and it is made a part of their duty, under the
direction of the Secretary of State, to gather and compile, from time to time, useful
and material information and statistics in respect to the subjects enumerated in
section three of this act in the countries and places to which such consular officers
are accredited and to send, under direction of the Secretary of State, reports as often
as required by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, of information and statistics
thus gathered and compiled.
The subjects enumerated in section three are "the foreign
and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, ship-
ping, and fishery industries, the labor interests, and the
transportation facilities of the United States."
The intention of Congress was not, of course, that which a
literal reading of the act might seem to imply — ^that con-
sular officers, located in foreign countries, should, for example,
gather statistics of the domestic commerce of the United
States, or even of the domestic commerce of foreign coun-
tries— ^but that these officers should gather and compile and
report such data as the Secretary of Commerce and Labor
should determine to be of practical value in promoting com-
merce and industry in the United States; and it is probable
that the Bureau of Manufactures, and its successor, the
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, have cor-
rectly interpreted the act, in assuming that they were charged
UNITED STATES 627
with a special sort of promotion work, namely, promotion
through extension of foreign markets.
The Bureau was organized on January 29, 1905, and pro-
ceeded to send out circular letters to chambers of commerce
and other organizations, and to individual manufacturers
and merchants, asking their cooperation. An index of
firms in industries producing articles exported was prepared,
and later this index was elaborated to include commercial
houses in foreign countries who were importers.
In July, 1905, the Division of Consular Reports was trans-
ferred from the Bureau of Statistics to the Bureau of Manu-
factures, and the latter bureau became the editing and pub-
lishing bureau of the consular reports requisitioned from
consular oflficers by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor
through the Secretary of State. In June of the following
year the work of collating and arranging the tariffs of foreign
countries was taken over from the Bureau of Statistics.*
By these transfers the Bureau of Manufactures acquired
functions which had been continuously exercised for more
than half a century.
These functions originated directly in consequence of a
House resolution on December 14, 1853, requesting the
President to report "a statement of the privileges and restric-
tions of the commercial intercourse of the United States
with foreign nations, similar to that communicated to this
House on March 29, 1842," and requesting, further, that he
"give a table exhibiting a comparative statement between
the tariffs of other nations and that of the United States
'Incidentally it may be noted that the Treasury Bureau of Statistics has con-
tributed largely out of its ample eqmpment of legitimate functions, to other federal
agencies: The duty of gathering, collating and amiually reporting statistics of
railroad systems, to the Interstate Commerce Commission; the duty of compiling
statistics of manufactures, to the Bureau of the Census; statistics of wages, to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics; statistics of cmrency and banks, to the Comptroller
of the Currency; immigration statistics, to the Commissioner of Immigration; the
duty of registering vessels, to the Bureau of Navigation. The functions which it
acquired from the Bureau of Foreign Commerce it could not retain and finally the
Bureau itself, with those functions of which it had not been divested, became a
division in a larger bureau.
628 MEMORIAL VOLUME
similar to the one prepared and laid before this body
in March, 1842."* The work of preparing this report
devolved upon the Secretary of State, and was made the
occasion of organizing a statistical oflSce in the State Depart-
ment, under a superintendent. The report, in four quarto
volumes, was transmitted in February, 1856, and the Super-
intendent observes, in transmitting it, that it would have
been more accurate, and the preparation of it less laborious
and expensive, "could it have been committed to an organ-
ized and practised bureau of commercial statistics, promptly
supplied by consular agents with all the requisite material
from abroad." Part I of the report gives a digest of the
commercial relations of the United States with some fifty
foreign countries, and contains nearly one thousand tabular
statements. Part II gives a detailed account of the tariffs
of the United States and of foreign nations, covering in each
case a period of years, and the changes in tariffs by principal
countries and products. Part III, in two volumes, is a
compilation of consular reports, obtained from about one
hundred thirty consulates, in answer to circulars of inquiry
sent out by the Department.
By an act approved August 18, 1856, the Statistical
Office was permanently established in the State Department,
and charged with the duty of preparing from the consular
reports an annual report on the Commercial Relations of
the United States. t An act approved August 16, 1842,
had required the Secretary to prepare such a report annually,
and Secretary Marcy states that three attempts had been
*The Superintendent of the Statistical 0£Bce in the Department of State mentions
three earlier reports on "the privileges and restrictions of the commercial intercourse
of the United States with foreign nations": a brief statement prepared by Secretary-
Jefferson in 1793; a statement of 74 octavo pages, by Secretary Forsyth, in 1839;
and one of nearly six hundred pages by Secretary Webster in 1842. In addition,
three digests of commercial regulations in foreign countries are noted — one issued in
1819, one in 1824, and one in 1831.
t The Statistical Office was constituted the Bureau of Statistics of the State De-
partment in 1874. In 1897 its title was changed to Bureau of Foreign Commerce,
and in 1903 it was merged in the Bureau of Statistics in the Department of Com-
merce and Labor.
UNITED STATES 629
made to comply with the law — one by Secretary Webster in
1842, one by Secretary Upshur, in 1843, and one by Secretary
Calhoun in 1844. Webster had recommended that the work
be entrusted to one person "who should arrange and con-
dense information on commercial subjects, from time to
time, as it should be received, and should have charge of the
correspondence on these subjects with agents of the govern-
ment abroad." The law of 1842 was administratively
defective, and the regular publication of an annual report
begins with the volume covering the year ending September
30, 1856. The general report of 1856 — ^prepared in com-
pliance with the resolution of December, 1853 — covered the
commercial relations of the United States, practically for
the period which had intervened since the passage of the
Act of 1842, and the Secretary believed that it constituted
"a body of commercial information from which might most
advantageously be continued the annual reports required
by the Act of 1842, rendered operative by that of 1856.
These annual reports would be analogous, as regards the
foreign field, to the Register of the Treasiwy's reports on
the Commerce and Navigation of the United States."
In this connection it is interesting to note the definition
of foreign and of domestic commerce, given by the House
Committee on Commerce in its statement accompanying the
bill of 1856. The Committee prepared the following state-
ment:
Foreign Commerce — the commerce of foreign nations with all others, and its
regulations — is peculiarly the province of that department of the government
charged with fordgn affairs and the direction of consular and diplomatic agents
abroad. Domestic Commerce — the commerce of the United States with all other
nations, and its regulations — is the province of that department charged with
revenue and the direction of o£Scers entrusted with its collection; and an annual
report from the foreign oflSce on foreign commerce seems scarcely less important
than an annual report from the finance office on domestic commerce.
This definition of foreign commerce seems to have per-
sisted in the State Department, and to have manifested
itself ultimately in the designation of the bureau which
edited the consular reports as the Bureau of Foreign Com-
630 MEMORIAL VOLUME
merce. Its definition of domestic commerce does not appear
to have been oflficially recognized.
The first report on commercial relations embraces abstracts
of consular returns and of foreign oflScial publications, and
a section on navigation and commerce giving entrances of
vessels from and clearings for the United States in foreign
ports. This annual constituted for many years the only
medium of publication of the consular trade reports. Even-
tually, however, these reports were edited and the sig-
nificant data pubhshed by the Bureau in monthly and daily
issues, which entirely destroyed the news value of the
annual compilation. The reports assembled for the annual,
however, constituted a bulky publication in one or two vol-
umes, aggregating from one thousand to two thousand
pages. It was commonly from one to two years in prepara-
tion after the close of the year to which the data pertained.
The edition was limited to one thousand copies, and it
was obviously in no respect promotive of commerce. The
chief of the Bureau of Manufactures in his annual report for
1906 called attention to the "inutility" of the Commercial
Relations report, and in succeeding years the propriety of
discontinuing it was suggested to Congress. Finally, in
1910, the annual report on Commercial Relations was re-
duced to a thin pamphlet of ninety nine pages, containing
some trade statistics for foreign countries, and even this
seems to have been quietly discontinued recently under an
interpretation of the law or a change in the wording of the
appropriation act.
Prior to the merger with the Bureau of Statistics, the
Bureau of Manufactures had established its character as
an oflBcial "intelligence office" for manufacturers and mer-
chants regarding trade opportimities in foreign markets.
In 1906 it received an appropriation of $30,000 to be ex-
pended in investigating trade conditions in foreign countries,
and under this appropriation appointed four special agents
to take up the work in certain countries. One of these
agents collected samples of cotton goods imported iato
UNITED STATES Ml
China, and these samples were cut up by the Bureau and
distributed to cotton manufacturing centers in the United
States, with statements of prices, quantities imported, and
other pertinent information. Samples of boots and shoes
worn in China, and other goods, also, were collected and
distributed for exhibition to American producers. The
Bureau had published a world trade directory of 1,158
pages, containing 125,000 names of individuals and firms
in foreign coimtries and was issuing numerous reports pre-
pared, some by its own agents in the foreign field, and others
by consular officers. Its annual correspondence had in-
creased to 65,000 outgoing letters, and it was issuing confi-
dential circulars descriptive of trade opportunities in foreign
markets. Ail important trade items were being published
promptly in the Daily Consular and Trade Reports, for
which a regular mailing list of 20,000 names had been built
up. In order to control the circulation of its various publi-
cations, the free distribution of them to individuals was
discontinued. A price of five dollars, for example, was
put upon its trade directory.
Under the Act of August 23, 1912, creating the Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, by merger of Sta-
tistics and Manufactures, certain duties which had devolved
upon the Bureau of Labor were transferred to the new
bureau — ^those, namely, which required it to ascertain the
cost and changes in the cost of production in leading foreign
countries of articles dutiable in the United States; the wages
paid, and the hours worked in industries producing such
articles, and the profits of manufacturers; the cost and
"kind" of living; and control by trusts. Under this pro-
vision several investigations, covering the pottery and
clothing industries, have been initiated. The work is
described as somewhat similar to that done by the former
Tariff Board.
It is a remarkable fact that under legislative enactments
which clearly provide for the promotion of domestic as well
as of foreign commerce, and which, in the opinion of the
632 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Bureau itself, extend its legitimate interest over "the factors
of commercial promotion and development related to domes-
tic production, distribution and consumption of manufac-
tures," this domestic field should have been entered upon
only quite recently, and that the promotion activities of the
Bureau should have related almost exclusively to that five
or six per cent, of our commerce which enters foreign
markets, upon the general theory that eflFective promotion
of domestic industry depends upon increasing the volume of
exports. To a considerable extent this is to be explained as
resulting from the specific provisions of the law as regards
the promotion of foreign commerce, and the omission of
equally specific provisions as regards domestic commerce.
The purpose of the law in requiring the Bureau to inves-
tigate the cost of production of articles dutiable in the
United States, seems to have been to determine the diflFer-
ences in cost which it has been felt must be offset by duties
in the interests of home production. It has thus been
conceived to be consistent as an effective policy of promo-
tion to seek to extend markets in foreign countries, while
seeking at the same time, by "equalizing" duties, to neutral-
ize one condition favorable to the development of foreign
commerce.
The Secretary of Commerce in a recent report describes
the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce as "the
spearhead of the Department's active work." It compiles
the data and information collected in the field by its com-
mercial agents and attaches, and by the consular service.
The commercial attache is an oflScer with a semi-diplomatic
status, permanently established in a foreign country, whose
interests embrace the national aspect of commercial activi-
ties; the consular oflScer is permanently established in a
foreign community, and is concerned with development
within the restricted area comprising his district; the special
agent is the "traveling man," the "trade scout" of the
Bureau, commissioned with some special inquiry which may
involve extensive traveling.
UNITED STATES 633
The Bureau does not rely solely upon its printed reports
to bring the results of its inquiries to practical utilization,
but has established branch oflSces in the larger cities, to
which consuls and commercial attaches and agents are sent
before going abroad and on returning from abroad, and in
this manner "contact with the business community is had
personally and hourly." The accumulated data and infor-
mation is not deposited in statistical archives, but is carried
directly and immediately, by personal agency, to the com-
munities and merchants and manufacturers who may profit
by the Bureau's service, which is generally inspired with
the "purpose of emphasizing the promotive value" of sta-
tistical data.
Labor Statistics. — Mention has been made of the desultory
eflForts made by the Treasury Bureau of Statistics to secure
data relating to wages, in compliance with one of the provi-
sions of the act creating that bureau, but no adequate pro-
vision was made for the collection of labor statistics until
1884. An act approved June 27 of that year created a
Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior. Four
years later, under an act approved June 13, 1888, the Bureau
of Labor became an independent department, without repre-
sentation in the Cabinet. The Act of February 14, 1903,
establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor, pro-
vided that the Department of Labor should be transferred
to the new department, and accordingly the Department of
Labor became, on July 1, 1903, the Bureau of Labor of the
Department of Commerce and Labor. The Bureau was
transferred to the Department of Labor by the organic act
of that Department, approved March 4, 1913, and its official
designation changed to Bureau of Labor Statistics.
These transfers have not involved any essential changes
in the functions of the Commissioner of Labor. The Act of
1888 stated the "general design and duties" of the Depart-
ment to be "to acquire and diffuse among the people of the
United States useful information on subjects connected with
labor, in the most general and comprehensive sense of that
634 MEMORIAL VOLUME
word, and especially upon its relation to capital, the hours
of labor, the earnings of laboring men and women, and the
means of promoting their material, social, intellectual, and
moral prosperity." The Commissioner was specially charged
"to investigate the causes of, and facts relating to all con-
troversies and disputes between employers and employees as
they may occur" ; he was to obtain from foreign nations such
information as he might deem desirable, relating to the sub-
jects committed to him; he was to ascertain "what articles
are controlled by trusts, or other combinations of capital,
business operations, or labor," and the effect of such com-
binations upon production and prices; he was to report
annually the information collated by him, and he might
prepare special reports.
It is interesting to note what lines of inquiry, other than
those noted above, seemed to Congress of suflScient impor-
tance to be specifically designated as means of promoting
the "material, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity" of
labor. As stated in the Act of 1888, these may be briefly
summarized as follows: In accordance with the general
design and duties of the Department, the Commissioner was
to ascertain, as early as possible and whenever industrial
changes made it essential, the cost of producing in foreign
countries articles at the time dutiable in the United States,
under a classification showing different elements of cost,
including wages, and the profits of manufacturers and pro-
ducers of such articles, and the comparative cost of living
and the kind of living; he was further to ascertain and report
as to the effect of the customs laws, and the effect upon the
agricultural industry of the state of the currency in the
United States, especially as regarded mortgage indebtedness
of farmers; "and what, if any, convict-made goods are
imported into this coimtry, and if so from whence" ; finally,
the rather perplexing provision is included that he should
"also establish a system of reports by which, at intervals of
not less than two years, he can report the general condition,
UNITED STATES 635
SO far as production is concerned, of the leading industries
of the country."
It is exceedingly fortunate that the conduct of the Depart-
ment was entrusted to a man of judgment and experience in
statistical work, Mr. Carroll D. Wright, who chose to be
guided largely by the general design and intent of the act,
rather than by its specific provisions, which cleariy author-
ized, and even directed him to dissipate the resources of the
Department in futile inquiries, not materially pertinent to
the welfare of labor.
In his first report to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor,
Mr. Wright reviewed the work which had been done under
his direction. Shortly after his appointment he had written
a letter to the Secretary of the Interior, in which he pointed
out that the Bureau could not be expected to solve industrial
or social problems, but that "its work must be classed among
educational efforts," and expressing the conviction that, by
judicious investigation and fearless pubKcation of results, it
"should enable the people to comprehend more clearly and
fully many of the problems which now vex them."
Twenty one annual, and twelve special reports besides a
number of minor miscellaneous reports, were prepared or
initiated under Commissioner Wright's direction; a bi-
monthly bulletin, authorized by an act of March 2, 1895,
was published beginning with November, 1895, and two
reports descriptive of conditions in the territory of Hawaii
were prepared in compliance with an act of April 30, 1900,
requiring the Bureau to report "relative to the commercial,
industrial, social, educational and sanitary condition of the
laboring classes of the Territory."
The annual reports covered a wide range, including such
subjects as industrial depressions, convict labor in the
United States, strikes and lockouts — ^four reports bearing
this title, cover a period of twenty five years, and present
data relating to 36,767 strikes, and 1,546 lockouts, involving
more than 9,500,000 workers; conditions of work and living
of working women in twenty two larger cities; railroad labor
636 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in the United States, based on railroad vouchers and pay
rolls, and including an account of the eflForts of companies
to assist employees, liabihty to accidents, etc. — a. report
which Mr. Wright felt had never been "properly studied";
cost of production of iron and steel, and of certain other
commodities in the United States and in other countries —
two reports done in compliance with the organic law, in
order that "a more scientific conclusion might be reached
relative to the rates of duties necessary for the purposes of
equaUzation," embracing "incidentally, however, and along
with the collection of the data required by Congress," data
relating to wages and cost of living for 16,000 families,
which constituted the bulk of the report; industrial, trade,
and technical education in the United States and in certain
foreign countries; building and loan associations in the
United States; work and wages of men, women, and children;
economic aspects of the liquor problem; hand and machine
labor — an investigation of the effect upon labor and upon
cost of production of the use of machinery; water, gas and
electric light plants under private and under municipal
ownership; wages in commercial countries — a compilation
of o£Scial data published by foreign countries; cost of living
of workingmen's famiUes, and retail prices of food; and
wages and hours of labor.
The series of special reports included a study of marriage
and divorce covering twenty years, 1867-1886; compilations
of labor laws; reports on compulsory insurance in Germany,
on the housing of working people in the United States and
in foreign countries, on conditions in the slums of New
York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, on the Gothen-
burg system of regulating the liquor traffic, on the phosphate
industry of the United States, on Italians in Chicago, on
regulation and restriction of output, and on coal mine labor
in Europe.
Subsequent annual reports have dealt with workmen's
insurance and benefit funds in the United States presenting
data relating to 88 national and international labor organiza-
UNITED STATES 637
tion funds, 530 local labor organization funds, 50 railroad
funds, 461 local establishment funds, and 18 hospital fimds;
workmen's insurance and compensation systems in Europe,
covering eleven countries; and industrial education in
Europe and in the United States, which embraces a detailed
account of public and private industrial schools, including
systems of instruction and training established by railroad
and other corporations.
No special reports have been issued since 1905, and the
series of annual reports was discontinued in 1912. A num-
ber of miscellaneous reports prepared in the Bureau have
been printed as Senate and House documents, and in recent
years these include some of the most extensive reports, such
as the report in four volumes on Conditions of Employment
in the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States, and the
report in nineteen volumes on Condition of Woman and
Child Wage Earners in the United States.
The one hundred bi-monthly bulletins issued by the
Bureau prior to June, 1912, contained regularly digests of
state labor reports and of foreign labor and statistical docu-
ments, new labor laws, and court decisions interpreting
labor laws; and each number carried in addition one or more
articles, dealing with some topic within the purview of the
Bureau.* In June, 1912, the scheme of the bulletin was
changed, each bulletin issued since that date being a mono-
graph of greater or less volume. Bulletin 105, for example,
presents retail prices, 1890-1911; Bulletin 128 gives wages
and hours of labor in the cotton, woolen, and silk industries,
•Bulletin 98, for January, 1912, for example, contained the following articles:
Mediation and Arbitration of Railway Labor Disputes in the United States, by
Chas. P. Neill; Attitude of Employing Interests toward Conciliation and Arbitration
in Great Britain, by A. Maurice Low; Attitude of Labor toward Conciliation and
Arbitration in Great Britain, by Arthur E. Holder; Conciliation, Arbitration, and
Sanitation in the Cloak, Suit and Skirt Industry in New York City, by Charles H.
Winslow; Industrial Courts in France, Germany, and Switzerland, by Helen L.
Sumner; Canadian Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907; Conciliation and
Arbitration of Railway Labor Disputes in Great Britain (conciliation and arbitra-
tion agreement of 1907) ; and Conciliation and Arbitration in Great Britain (con-
ciliation act of 1896).
638 MEMORIAL VOLUME
1890 to 1912; and in other bulletins wages and hours of
labor are shown for other industries or groups of industries
covering a period of years; Bulletin 143 gives union scale of
wages and hours of labor. May 15, 1913. Other bulletins
are less statistical in character, dealing with such subjects
as labor legislation, administration of labor laws, care of
tuberculosis wage earners in Germany, lead poisoning in
certain occupations, court decisions, dangers to workers
from dust and fumes, maximum working day for young
persons and women, and prohibition of night work for young
persons; but in many cases bulletins not primarily statistical
embrace considerable statistical compilations of data col-
lected in the field by the Bureau's agents. According to a
statement prepared by its Chief Statistician, "The Bureau
regularly reports on wages and hours of labor in all the
principal industries ... in addition to the compila-
tion of the union scales of wages and hours of labor in fifty
of the better organized industries. It publishes an annual
bulletin on wholesale prices and collects retail prices monthly
on the leading articles of food from forty five cities in the
United States."
Upon the basis of its wage and price data the Bureau has
for years prepared index figures calculated to show the trend
of wages and prices, its price statistics and indexes being
prepared with the intention of measuring changes in the
cost of living for wage earners' families.
While much of the work done by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics is purely statistical, its activities range over a
wide field of investigating, compiling and reporting which is
descriptive and non-statistical, if the term statistics be
restricted to numerical statement. Something of the extent
of its varied activities may be inferred from the fact that its
publications during the year ended June 30, 1915, aggregated
over nine thousand pages. In July, 1915, the Bureau insti-
tuted a "Monthly Review." This periodical summarizes
from time to time the reports of American and Foreign
official reports, covering the publications of bureaus in forty
UNITED STATES 639
American states and insular possessions, and in thirty one
foreign countries, gives current information for the United
States upon the amount of employment and unemployment,
strikes and lockouts (including the work of the Division of
Conciliation of the Department of Labor), immigration,
industrial accidents and hygiene, and contains brief articles
on various subjects pertaining to the health and welfare of
laboring men and women.
The Bureau administers the Federal Compensation Act,
and in the year ended June 30, 1914, 5,773 accidents were
reported to the Bureau; claims for compensation were sub-
mitted in 2,558 cases; 2,462 claims were approved, calling
for the payment of $311,907.
Two recent reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
illustrate the scope and character of some of its inquiries.
The report on conditions of employment in the iron and
steel industry, begun in July, 1910, and completed in August,
1912, presents in Volumes I and II data taken from com-
pany pay rolls, for the month of May, 1910, relating to
wages and hours for 173,000 employees. It is shown that
50,000, or 29 per cent, of these employees, were working
seven days per week, and that 20 per cent, of the 173,000
were working 84 hours per week. In the blast furnaces 88
per cent, of the employees were working on twelve-hour
shifts, and seven days per week, and on changes of shifts
these employees remained continuously on duty 18 or 24
hours. Only 14 per cent, of the total number of employees
covered by the inquiry were working less than 60 hours per
week. Volume III of the report presents data showing the
trend of wages, 1900-1910, in the iron and steel industry,
and relating to such topics as annual earnings, irregularity
of employment, pension funds, earnings in large and small
plants, relation of wages to profits and costs, and working
conditions and eflSciency as affected by heat, and by speed
and severity of the work. Volume IV presents data relating
to accidents in 155 plants, employing 158,604 employees,
covering the year ended June 30, 1910. For this group of
640 MEMORIAL VOLUME
workers the accident rate, per one thousand 300-day workers,
was determined to be 245. A considerable portion of the
report is devoted to an analysis of the data relating to wages
and hours with a view to estimating the cost of establishing
an eight-hour day.
Coincidently with the investigation of the iron and steel
industry, the Bureau was engaged in the preparation of its
nineteen-volume report on Woman and Child Wage Earners
in the United States. This investigation was undertaken in
compliance with an act of June 29, 1907, authorizing the
Secretary of Commerce and Labor "to investigate and report
on the industrial, social, moral, educational, and physical
condition of woman and child wage earners in the United
States wherever employed, with especial reference to their
age, hours of labor, term of employment, health, illiteracy,
sanitary and other conditions surrounding their occupation,
and the means employed for the protection of their health,
person, and morals." The report deals, in separate volumes,
with the cotton textile industry, the men's ready-made cloth-
ing industry, the glass industry, the silk industry, stores and
factories, the metal trades, lailndries, and selected industries.
Other volumes deal with child labor legislation, conditions
under which children leave school to go to work, juvenile
delinquency and its relation to employment, history of
women in industry in the United States, history of women
in trade unions, infant mortality and its relation to employ-
ment of mothers, causes of death among women and children
cotton-mill operatives, relation between occupation and
criminality of women, family budgets of typical cotton-mill
operatives, hookworm disease among cotton-mill operatives,
and labor laws and factory conditions. The character of
these several inquiries and the methods employed varied
with the nature of each inquiry. In the case of the cotton
textile industry, 198 mills in ten states were covered. These
mills enaployed 81,335 workers, of whom 27,347 were women
and 11,376 were children under sixteen years of age. Age
returns from mill records or from employees were verified by
UNITED STATES 641
birth records, and even by consulting on occasion the family
Bible. Family schedules were taken from 2,421 famihes.
The report on men's ready-made clothing industry covered
244 factories, employing 23,683 employees, of whom 11,759
were women and 848 children, family schedules being taken
from 2,225 families. In the glass industry inquiry, data
were gathered relating to 4,049 women and 5,705 children,
in 190 estabhshments; in the silk industry inquiry, 4,741
women and 588 children, in 174 mills were covered; in the
inquiry relating to stores and factories, 8,475 women were
visited. In the inquiry relating to cause of leaving school,
620 cases were investigated; in the juvenile delinquency
inquiry, 4,839 cases; in the metal trades inquiry, 348 estab-
lishments were visited, detailed reports being made covering
246 establishments, employing 85,225 workers, of whom
23,542 were women and 2,684 children; the investigation of
employment in laundries covered 315 laundries employing
5,142 women; the causes of death inquiry covered 1,629
cases; detailed budgets of income and expenditures were
made up covering 35 typical famihes; the hookworm inquiry
covered 195 establishments; in 23 selected industries data
were obtained relating to 55,929 women and 7,968 children.
The volume on labor laws and factory conditions summarizes
the laws of 17 states, and 563 establishments in 58 indus-
tries were visited, and the extent to which the provisions of
the laws were observed in these establishments reported.
In these inquiries, which are fairly typical of work done
by the Bureau in other fields, extensive inquiry, covering
large areas and a wide range of industries, is combined with
intensive studies based upon data gathered from individuals,
in personal conference by agents of the Bureau.
The Children's Bureau. — ^The statistical work of the Chil-
dren's Bureau in the Department of Labor is represented
principally in its reports of special investigations into infant
mortality in selected communities. Registrations of births
within a given year in the selected community are examined,
and data secured relating to each infant recorded, embracing
42
642 MEMORIAL VOLUME
home conditions and environment. These data are col-
lected by women agents of the Bureau who visit the family
represented by each birth registration. The Bureau has
clearly been embarrassed in this work by the fact that the
registration of births and deaths in communities generally
is incomplete, and in its publications, the statistical compila-
tions have been somewhat over elaborate, when the number
of cases covered is taken into account — distinctions being
imposed upon, rather than developed out of the data.
Statistical Work of the Department of Agriculture. — The
organic act, establishing the Department of Agriculture,
approved May 15, 1862, defines the general design and duties
of the Department to be to acquire and diffuse information
relating to agriculture, and requires the Commissioner of
Agriculture to procure and preserve all such information
which he "can obtain by the collection of statistics or in any
other way." The origin of the Department, however, dates
back to 1839, in which year Congress appropriated $1,000
out of the patent fimd, to be expended under direction of
the Commissioner of Patents "in the collection of agricul-
tural statistics, and for other agricultural purposes." The
Department of Agricultiu'e, therefore, "grew out of a provi-
sion for statistical work in the Patent Office,"* and the
amounts appropriated in single years for the exercise of this
extraordinary function by the Commissioner of Patents
increased from one to more than one hundred thousand
dollars.
The "other" agricultural purposes to which these early
appropriations were appUed, besides the collection and dis-
tribution of statistics, embraced principally, if not exclusive-
ly, the collection and distribution of seeds, and both of these
sorts of service have been continued down to the present time
* Julius H. Fannetee, The Statistical Work of the Federal Government, Yale
Review, February, 1911. Mr. Farmelee notes that the Conunissioner of Patents,
in one of his annual reports, "naively remarked that he hoped these agricultural
statistics would guard against monopoly or an exorbitant price. " This, it may be
observed, is one of the principal purposes of the statistical work of the Depart-
ment today.
UNITED STATES 64S
— 182,000 packages of seed being distributed in 1914 — under
an organization which has become increasingly eflFective and
scientific. A statistician was appointed shortly after the
organization of the Department, and in 1865 a separate
appropriation of $20,000 was made for statistical work.
This work, as it has developed in the Department, differs
essentially from that undertaken in any other branch of the
federal service, in that it is largely occupied with the con-
struction of estimates, rather than with the mechanical com-
pilation of data. It is true that the Department pubhshes
each year a very considerable amount of agricultural statis-
tics of the conventional sort, embracing, besides compila-
tions of data prepared by foreign governments, a general
statistical accounting of the diverse activities of the Depart-
ment itself, as conducted, for example, by its Office of
Experiment Stations, which brings the Department into
"broad and intimate relations with the whole land-grant
educational machinery of the nation"; by its Bureau of
Chemistry, which is charged with administration of the food
and drugs act; by its Forest Service, charged with the preser-
vation and scientific exploitation of the national forests; by
its Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering, which
collects systematically data relating to road construction
and maintenance, covering costs, mileage and types of roads;
by its Biological Survey, charged with the supervision of the
national bird and mammal reservations; by its Federal
Horticultural Board, charged with the administration of the
plant quarantine act; by its Bureau of Soils, which has
surveyed in detail 210,904,960 acres; and by its Bureau of
Animal Industry which, during the fiscal year 1914, inspected
58,859,028 animals slaughtered, and supervised the prepara-
tion and processing of 7,033,000,000 pounds of meat and food
products, and is charged, under the tariff act of 1913, with
the duty of inspecting imported meats. The Department's
statistical work embraces, also, reports of intensive' farm
surveys of selected areas, detailed inventories and cost ac-
counting for individual farms, inquiry relating to labor in-
644 MEMORIAL VOLUME
come of farmers; and a large number of special inquiries,
such as that recently undertaken concerning rural credits,
in which the services of the Department's numerous cor-
respondents are utilized in collecting data on special sched-
ules or questionnaires. The activities of the Department,
which to a greater or less extent involve statistical account-
ing and compilation, are diverse and numerous, and can not
be briefly summarized. As regards statistical methods and
practice, however, these compilations do not represent any
general poHcy which may be regarded as Departmental.
Apart from this statistical accounting which comprehends
the scientific and administrative activities of the Depart-
ment, its statistical work of chief importance and of most
general interest is conducted by the Bureau of Crop Esti-
mates, whose appropriation for the year ended June 30, 1915,
amounted to $275,580. Under the direction of this Bureau
each year estimates are prepared of acreages planted to
principal crops, of monthly condition of crops during the
growing season, of yield at harvest, and of numbers and
values of farm animals. These estimates are based upon
the returns made to the Bureau by a corps of more than
140,000 voluntary crop reporters and by special correspond-
ents of civil-service status. Acting as a "clearing house"
of reports secured from the farmers themselves through these
correspondents, the Bureau undertakes to prepare state-
ments of crop conditions and yields which will prevent
speculative manipulation of prices, and which, among other
practical benefits, will guide railroad companies in the dis-
tribution of car capacity available for moving crops.
By its system of estimating, the Bureau produces, for the
years intervening between the decennial censuses of agricul-
ture, figures relating to acreage, yield, and value of crops,
and to number and value of classes of farm animals, which
correspond to figures obtained by enumeration at the census.
But it should be remarked that the service performed by the
Bureau of Crop Estimates does not in any respect corre-
spond to that performed by the Census Bureau, and that
UNITED STATES 645
even if a census of agriculture were taken each year, such an
annual enumeration would in no respect diminish the utility
of the crop estimates. This is obviously true of the esti-
mates which relate to the condition of growing crops, since
no enumeration could take any account of this condition.
But it is equally true of the other estimates prepared in the
Bureau that they could not be supplanted by any system of
enumeration, since these estimates severally relate to that
instant of time in which they are published, and the inter-
vention of any interval whatever between the instant repre-
sented by the estimate and its pubUcation — ^an interval such,
for example, as would be required for compilation of data
gathered by enumeration — would practically destroy the
value of the estimate, and would certainly destroy its value
as a means of preventing speculative manipulation of prices.
The field service employed in collecting the data upon
which the estimates are based includes several classes of
agents, specialists and reporters. To each large state, or
equivalent area, a state field agent is assigned, who during
the growing season travels throughout his territory, and
reports regularly to the Bureau for that area, basing his
report upon his own personal observation and upon reports
made directly to him by selected reporters in his territory —
these reporters being entirely independent of those in the
territory who report directly to the central Bureau in Wash-
ington.* Certain important crops are covered by crop
specialists, assisted by selected crop correspondents. In
each of the 2,800 counties of agricultural importance in the
United States, the Bureau is represented by a county re-
porter who has several assistants, and who reports on the
county area each month directly to the Bureau. In all
agricultural townships or voting precincts there are "town-
ship" reporters who report directly to the Bureau, the total
* The crop estimating service of the Btireau and the method of estimating are
described in detail in Circular 17 of the Bureau of Crop Estimates. The brief
summary account given in the following paragraphs is based upon the description
in this circular.
646 MEMORIAL VOLUME
number of such reporters being about 32,000. "Finally, at
the end of the growing season a large number of individual
farmers and planters report on the results of their own
individual farming operations during the year," and data
are secured from some 30,000 mills and elevators. In the
case of the cotton crop "in addition to the regular estimates
of the state agents, the cotton crop specialist, and the county
and township reporters, the bureau obtains reports . . .
from many thousand special reporters."
Each month each of these correspondents reports inde-
pendently to the Department. The reports of the state
field agents and of the crop specialists are either telegraphed
in cipher, or delivered to the Secretary of Agriculture in
sealed mail pouches, which are opened by him or the Assist-
ant Secretary, and deposited in a safe, the combination of
which is known only to the Secretary and the Assistant
Secretary. County and township correspondents report
<iirectly to the Chief of the Bureau. The reports from each
county are compiled and weighted according to the acreage
or production of the county, and a figure representing the
state areas is thus obtained, from these reports of county
and township correspondents.
The final estimate is made by a crop reporting board of
five members, which assembles in a room from which all
telephones have been disconnected. The reports and tele-
grams from the field agents and the crop specialists are taken
from the safe and delivered to the board by the Secretary of
Agriculture. Each member of the board makes an inde-
pendent estimate for each state based upon the data pre-
sented. These several estimates are compared and a final
estimate determined upon. The state estimates as finally
determined upon by the board are weighted according to
acreage or other figures, and a figure obtained for the country
as a whole. At an hour which has been previously desig-
nated the estimates are given out to the press and are
immediately telegraphed to the weather bureaus of each
state, where they are printed and mailed out to local papers.
UNITED STATES 647
Estimates covering the country as a whole and each state
separately are thus composed and widely disseminated in
urban and rural districts in every state within the space of
a few hours.
These estimates are based in part upon the census returns.
As regards acreage, for example, the reporters of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture are asked to estimate the acreage of any
given year as a percentage of the acreage of the year pre-
ceding. K there has been in their opinion no increase or
decrease in the acreage planted to any crop in the year
covered by the estimate, as compared with the year preced-
ing, their estimate is 100, and an increase or decrease of 10
per cent, would be reported as 110 or 90. By composing
these estimates for each area, a figure is obtained which in
the year following the census can be applied to the census
returns of acreage, and in each year following the acreage
is developed indirectly from the census returns as the original
base. So as regards number of animals, the estimates made
by the reporters are applied directly or indirectly to the
census returns.
The monthly crop condition estimates are of course inde-
pendent of census returns, and so also are the estimates of
yield per acre. But in figuring the total yield of any crop
the estimate is thrown back upon the census return of
acreage which has been developed by the application of
percentages each year, as noted above. The census deter-
mines yield per acre from its returns of acreage and of total
yield; the reporters of the Department of Agriculture esti-
mate yield per acre, and from this estimate applied to the
estimated acreage in any year the total yield of any crop is
derived.
It is believed that the Department of Agriculture's esti-
mates of yield per acre in the case of the principal crops are
fairly accurate, and it is pointed out that these estimates do
not in census years vary widely from the average yields per
acre, as figured by the Census Bureau. Incidentally it may
648 MEMORIAL VOLUME
be noted that this would seem to be good evidence that the
census returns of acreage and total yield are accurate.
In the case of farm animals, it is recognized that the basis
for estimating is less satisfactory than it is in the case of
acreage, owing to the fact that the number of animals
fluctuates greatly from month to month in any year. The
census figures do not take account of this fluctuation, and
as the estimates and the census figures relate to different
seasons of the year, they may not correspond closely to one
another.
Since the estimates of the Department of Agriculture are
carried back to the census returns, it has been felt that a
census of agriculture should be taken oftener than once in
ten years. The act providing for the Thirteenth Census,
in fact, provided for a quinquennial census of agriculture to
be taken by the Census Bureau, but Congress has- failed to
provide for such a census in 1915. The Department of
Agriculture itself, in the winter of 1913-14, made an experi-
mental census of Maryland and of certain counties in South
Carolina, by distributing and collecting, through rural mail
carriers, schedules calling for a return of acreage and of num-
bers of farm animals. Less than 40 per cent, of the farmers
filled out the schedules, and the experiment convinced
the Department that it would be exceedingly difficult to
obtain returns for the country, as a whole, that would be
sufficiently complete to be of value. The Department has
recently decided to establish a list of typical farms which
will make full reports regularly of acreages and number of
animals, and it is believed that the returns from these farms
obtained each year will provide a basis for developing out
of the census figures estimates more accurate than those
which have been obtained in the past.
When the census returns of acreage for any census year
become available the Department of Agriculture revises
its estimates for the years immediately following that in
which the census is taken. The acreage of corn, for example,
was originally estimated to be, in 1909, 108,771,000 acres;
UNITED STATES 649
and in 1910, 114,002,000 acres. The census return of corn
acreage for 1909 was 98,382,665 acres. When this return
became available the Department of Agriculture reduced
its estimate for 1910 from 114,002,000 to 104,035,000 acres.
Similarly as regards production, the Department of Agri-
culture estimated the production of corn to be in 1909,
2,772,376,000 bushels, and in 1910, 3,125,713,000 bushels.
The census return for 1909 was 2,552,189,630 bushels; the
revised estimate for 1910, 2,886,260,000 bushels.
The Bureau of Crop Estimates makes the following state-
ment with reference to its estimates:*
A weak point in the system which has long been recognized is the fact that indi-
vidual crop reports are not free from bias, and there appears to be a fairly uniform
tendency to either overestimate or underestimate the acreage, the result being a
cumulative error which in ten years is apt to result in a wide discrepancy between
the estimates of this Bureau and the figures of the census.
This point is illustrated by a hypothetical case, as follows:
A crop of which the acreage according to census returns re-
mains fixed at 10,000,000 acres, may be underestimated by
an average of 2 per cent, each year, the estimates running
by years, 9,800,000; 9,600,000; 9,412,000 and so on to
8,170,000 for the tenth year, with the result that a discrep-
ancy develops between the census figures and the estimate,
as a result of this persistent 2 per cent, underestimate, of
1,830,000 acres. As regards the estimates of yield per acre,
it is pointed out that there is no such cumulation of error,
since these estimates for any given year are not related to
estimates for any other year. Therefore "a constant yearly
underestimate of 2 per cent, in the yield per acre will not be
magnified in five or ten years, but, on the other hand, in
comparing one year's estimated yield with another the errors
will be neutralized; that is, the effect would be the same, so
far as comparative value is concerned, as though no error
had occurred."
This explanation of the divergence of the Bureau's esti-
mates from the figures representing the census enumeration
• Circular 17, pp. 17-18.
650 MEMORIAL VOLUME
is not entirely convincing. The assumption that an over-
estimate or an underestimate in the case of any crop in the
census year represents a cumulative error due to a tempera-
mental tendency or bias on the part of individual reporters
carries with it the assumption that each year the reporter
reduces his estimate or advances it as compared with,
not the acreage of the preceding year, but his own estimate
of that acreage, and that in the face of unchanging condi-
tions, he may continue to scale down, or to scale up his own
estimates from year to year. Even if it be assumed that
there is this temperamental bias on the part of individual
reporters, in some cases to scale up and in other cases to
scale down, it would not result in any divergence of the
estimate from enumerated returns unless it were true that
the tendency to overestimate or to underestimate predomi-
nated. Some such net collective bias seems to be implied
in the Bureau's statement which has been quoted, and it is
of course a necessary implication, on the theory that the
divergencies represent a cumulative rather than an acci-
dental error. But the data do not seem to justify this theory
of a collective cumulative bias. The acreage of corn, for
example, in 1899, as returned by the census, was 94,913,673
acres; as estimated by the Department of Agriculture it
was 82,108,587 acres. The collective bias in the decade
preceding 1900, as regards corn acreage, was therefore to
underestimate; in 1909, on the other hand, as has been
noted, the estimate, 108,771,000 acres, exceeded the census
return of 98,382,665 acres. On the theory of the Bureau of
Crop Estimates, therefore, the bias as regards com acreage
made a right-about-face in 1900, and this sort of reversion
seems inconsistent with the general character of biases.
There is the further diflSculty that the individual reporters
cover not one crop but several crops, and there is no general
tendency in evidence uniformly to overestimate or to under-
estimate all crops. So that it would seem necessary to assume
that the bias is particular and contrary as regards individ-
ual crops. Finally, the same crop is overestimated in some
UNITED STATES 651
states and underestimated in others; so that it is necessary
to assume that the bias is particular and contrary as to
states. But the fundamental diflBculty involved in the
explanation is that there is no means of testing the esti-
mates from year to year, or in any year except that in which
the census is taken. In this year it is found that the esti-
mate for the country as a whole is in excess, or is deficient,
and it is assumed that the error represents a cumulation of
bias; but the error in other years can not be determined,
and the assumption that it is cumulative rather than acci-
dental is, therefore, gratuitous. It would seem entirely
probable that estimates related to census returns in 1899,
should develop a wider margin of error from year to year as
the interval intervening between the census enumeration
and the year of . estimate lengthens. This might result
from many diflFerent accidental causes, such as changes in
methods of culture, or in the development of some abnormal
condition such as, for example, is consequent upon the pres-
ent European war, or upon some underljdng social change
difficult to estimate accurately. In a word, the simple
explanation of the divergence of the estimate from the true
figures which as regards different census years, and as re-
gards all crops, and as regards the states, is not biased but
only to a greater or less extent diversely erroneous, would
seem to be that from year to year conditions as regards the
several crops in different localities change in an accidental
way, and that as a result of these accidental local and gen-
eral changes, which are difficult to estimate on a percentage
basis, the estimate carried back over a greater interval of
time develops a wider margin of error — ^primarily in the
states, and ultimately in the country as a whole as a net
margin of the composed state errors, sometimes in excess
and sometimes deficient. But it would seem not improba-
ble that, if estimates and census returns were available for a
series of years, it would be found that in the case of indi-
vidual crops in one year the estimate would exceed and in
the following year fall short of the census figures and that
652 MEMORIAL VOLUME
that variation which is interpreted as a cumulation of biased
error represents in fact, to a considerable extent, that
margin of accidental error which attaches without bias to
each year of the decade.
Estimates of conditions are expressed by the reporters in
percentages of that condition which is described as "normal,"
a condition defined as one which will produce a full crop,
i.e., a crop rather above the average. It has been pro-
posed that the estimates might better be in a different form;
that, for example, the probable yield per acre of corn might
better be expressed in bushels, rather than as a percentage of
the normal yield; or that, if percentages are used, the base
might better be an average yield per acre for a period of
years, or the actual yield during the preceding year. In
other words that there should be some objective standard
such as the ten-year average of the International Institute
of Agriculture, by which to measure the condition of a grow-
ing crop and the yield. In defence of the method employed
by the Department of Agriculture it is contended that the
farmer naturally judges the condition of his crop as normal,
or above or below normal, and that he easily converts these
subjective estimations into percentages of the normal; that
it would be more difficult for him at any time during the
growing season to estimate the yield than to estimate the
condition; that a percentage statement based upon the
yield of the preceding year would fluctuate violently from
year to year and that the farmer might not remember accu-
rately what the yield per acre was in the preceding year;
finally, that an average is a fluctuating standard, and that
its employment as a base would impose upon the Bureau an
immense amount of preliminary calculation of averages for
thousands of small areas, covering conditions by months for
a large number of individual crops.
Immigration Statistics. — The Federal Bureau of Immigra-
tion was established in the Treasury Department under an
act approved March 3, 1891. Prior to that date the en-
forcement of the immigration laws had been effected under
UNITED STATES 653
contracts entered into by the Secretary of the Treasuty
with the several states. The Bureau was transferred to the
Department of Commerce and Labor by the organic act of
that department in 1903, and its powers were amplified
under an act approved June 29, 1906, which created a divi-
sion of naturalization in the Bureau, and changed its oflBcial
designation to "Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization."
The Act of March 4, 1913, establishing the Department of
Labor, transferred the immigration service to the new De-
partment, and at the same time constituted the Division of
Naturalization a separate bureau in the Department of
Labor, restoring the old title, "Bureau of Immigration," to
that portion of the immigration service charged with the
administration of the immigration laws.
The data gathered by the inspection service of the Bureau
of Immigration, relating to the hundreds of thousands of
immigrants arriving in the country each year, constitute
material for statistical compilatioins which are of immense
social significance. While these data are compiled in con-
siderable detail, they are worthy of the most complete anal-
ysis and detail of compilation that can be given, and in
years past the immigration service, largely occupied with
the administration of the immigration laws, has not been
equipped to undertake such a compilation of the data accu-
mulating in its records, as the character of the data clearly
warranted. The statistical compilations of the Bureau have,
however, been extended and improved siince the passage
of the act to regulate the immigration of aliens, approved
February 20, 1907.
This act, it may be noted, increased the head tax on the
entry of aliens from two dollars to four dollars. The yield
of this tax had been, and, for several years, continued to be
up to a certain amount, paid into a special fund separately
devoted to the maintenance of the immigration service, and
it provided a revenue considerably in excess of the total cost
of that service. Under the appropriation act of March 4,
1909, however, the receipts from the head tax were covered
654 MEMORIAL VOLUME
into the treasury, and the expenses of the immigration service
were provided for in regular appropriations. The Act of
1907 established, within the Bureau of Immigration and Nat-
uralization, a Division of Information charged with the duty
of promoting "a beneficial distribution of aliens admitted,"
and the 1914 report of the Commissioner-General shows that,
in that year, 3,368 immigrants were distributed to places of
employment. Provision was made in the act, also, for the
appointment of a Joint Commission on Immigration, which
should make "a full inquiry, examination, and investigation
. . . into the subject of immigration." During the four
or five years following, this Commission prepared a volumi-
nous report, comprising data gathered on elaborate schedules
relating to the conditions and employments of immigrants
living in communities throughout the United States — a
report which embraces the most considerable statistical
compilation relating to immigrants that has been under-
taken by the federal government.
The section of the act which largely determines the char-
acter of the statistics regularly compiled in the Bureau of
Immigration is that which requires oflBcers of vessels to de-
liver to the immigration officers at the port of arrival, "lists
or manifests made at the time of embarkation," which
shall show for each alien data relating to age; sex; marital
condition; occupation; literacy; nationality; race; last
residence; name and address of nearest relative; place of
landing; destination; payment of passage; amount of money
possessed; whether joining a relative or friend, with name
and address of such person; previous residence in the United
States; whether ever in prison, almshouse, or hospital for
the insane; whether coming under any agreement to per-
form labor or by reason of any solicitation or promise; men-
tal and physical health; and physical deformity, if any. It
is further provided that lists — specifying age, sex, nation-
ality, residence in the United States, occupation, and time
of last arrival in the United States — of alien passengers
leaving the country shall be filed with collectors of customs,
UNITED STATES 655
such lists to be placed at the disposal of the Commissioner-
General of Immigration. Finally, the Commissioner-Gen-
eral is charged further with the duty of prescribing rules of
entry and inspection of aliens along the Canadian and Mexi-
can boundaries.
The statistics compiled by the Bureau since 1906 show
for each year the volume of net immigration of aliens. Data
relating to citizens arrived and departed are tabulated sep-
arately from data relating to aliens admitted, departed,
debarred and returned. Aliens admitted are further classi-
fied as immigrant aliens — "whose permanent domicile has
been outside the United States, who intend to reside per-
manently in the United States " — and non-immigrant aUens
— "making a temiporary trip to the United States" — and a
similar distinction is maintained for aliens departed, who
are classified as emigrant and as non-emigrant aliens. Aliens
admitted and departed are classified by port of record, by
month of year, by country whence coming or to which going,
by race or people, by state of intended future permanent
residence or of last permanent residence, by occupation, by
sex, and by age. For aliens admitted data relating to lit-
eracy, amount of money in possession, payment of passage,
and relations or friends are shown; and for aliens departed,
data relating to length of residence in the United States.
Each of some 40 racial groups is distributed by occupation;
and each occupational group by state of intended residence,
or of last permanent residence.
At each decennial census data are collected by the Census
Bureau relating to the foreign-born population, and these
data are compiled in detail for states and cities, showing
many of the characteristics — such, for example, as age, sex,
marital condition, occupation and illiteracy — which are dis-
tinguished in the statistics compiled for immigrants by the
Bureau of Immigration. As regards the foreign-born popu-
lation, the census statistics deal with precisely those indi-
viduals which are represented in the statistics compiled by
the Bureau of Immigration, and if these two classes of sta-
656 MEMORUL VOLUME
tistics were perfectly cobrdinated, they would provide a
continuous statistical accounting for the foreign-born popu-
lation throughout the decade. Such a coordination would
increase the value of both classes of data, and there would
seem to be no reason why compilations relating on the one
hand to immigrants and, on the other hand, to the foreign-
bom population, should not be identical. In these classi-
fications, however, the coordination is, in fact, imperfect. In
the census compilations, the foreign-bom are classified ac-
cording to country of birth, with some racial subdivisions;
while in the Bureau of Immigration statistics, immigrants
are classified by country of last permanent residence, and
by race, but not by country of birth. As regards the prin-
ciple of classification, therefore, the data are not perfectly
comparable; moreover, in the compilation of the data, there
is no complete coordination, as regards details of such char-
acteristics as age, sex, and marital condition, shown for the
different classes. The age grouping for marital condition
data, for example, is for the population fourteen years of
age and over, in the immigration table, and for the popula-
tion fifteen years of age and over in the census tables. It
would seem perfectly possible, by cooperation of the two
bureaus, to bring these two classes of statistics under some
more uniform scheme of compilation.
The possibilities of coordination may be indicated by
considering a single instance, namely, the grouping of coun-
tries in the census tables showing country of birth for the
foreign-bom, and in the Bureau of Immigration table classi-
fying immigrants by country of last permanent residence.
Practically the same number of countries is shown in each
table. Generally it may be assumed that in the case of
individuals the country of last permanent residence is also
the country of birth, and the data contained in the two
tables are, therefore, essentially comparable, in so far as the
areas shown separately are identical. In this case, there-
fore, it would seem obvious that as far as possible the areas
shown separately and the grouping of areas should be identi-
UNITED STATES 657
cal. A comparison of the two tables, however, develops
many discrepancies, some of which are simply discrepancies
of form — discrepancies which could be eliminated by rear-
ranging the items shown, and introducing totals for items
shown separately. Other discrepancies would require for
their correction slight modifications extending back to the
origiQal classification of the data; but in practically no case
would any radical or diflScult modification be required to
make the two tables correspond perfectly. In the census
table three continental areas are shown, Europe, Asia, and
North and South America outside of the United States, and a
total is carried against each of these grand divisions, and
against "all other," including Africa, Australia, Oceanic
Islands, born at sea, and not specified; in the table for immi-
grants, a total is shown for Europe and for Asia, but for no
other grand divisions. The totals, it may be noted, incident-
ally, in the case of the census table precede the items, and in
the case of the immigration table follow the items. In the
census table the countries are grouped geographically; in
the immigration table, alphabetically. In the census table
European countries are grouped under two headings as
countries of "Northwestern Europe," and of "Southern and
Eastern Europe"; this grouping is not recognized in the
immigration table. The census table shows a total for
"Great Britain" specifying under this designation Eng-
land, Scotland, and Wales; the immigration table intro-
duces the heading "United Kingdom" without giving any
total for this area, and groups under this heading England,
Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The census table shows a
total for "Russia and Finland" and imder this designation
separately "Russia" and "Finland"; the immigration table
shows "Russian Empire and Finland," but does not show
Russian Empire or Finland separately. The census table
carries a total for "Scandinavian countries," covering Nor-
way, Sweden, and Denmark, which are separately shown;
the immigration table shows these countries separately, but
no total for the group. Similarly a total is shown in the
43
658 MEMORIAL VOLUME
census table for "Austria-Hungary," but not in the immi-
gration table. The census table shows "Luxemburg," but
this area is not shown in the immigration table. The census
shows separately Bulgaria, Servia and Montenegro, under
the general heading "Balkan Peninsula," which covers also
Boumania, Greece, and Turkey in Europe; the immigration
table shows a total (not shown in the census table) for "Bul-
garia, Servia and Montenegro," but does not show these
countries separately. In the census table are included
as designations of national areas "France," "Germany,"
"Italy," "Portugal," and "Spain"; in the immigration
table the designations are "France, including Corsica,"
"German Empire," "Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia,"
"Portugal, including Cape Verde and Azore Islands,"
" Spain, including Canary and Balearic Islands." The census
table shows "Canada-French," "Canada-other" and "New-
foundland"; the immigration table shows "British North
America," without subdivision. The census table shows
Cuba separately from other West Indies; the immigration
table shows only a total for West Indies, including Cuba.
In the census table, figures are given for "Australia"; in
the immigration table for "Australia, Tasmania, and New
Zealand." The census table carries the headings "Atlantic
Islands," "Pacific Islands," and "Born at Sea"; the only
corresponding heading in the immigration table is "Pacific
Islands, not specified." In neither table is there any defini-
tion of such headings as "Other Europe," or "Other Asia."
In many cases these discrepancies are merely discrepancies
of nomenclature and arrangement, and to the extent that
they are so, they are certainly inexcusable. They obscure the
comparabihty of the data, and make difficult any relating
of immigration statistics to the statistics of the foreign-born
population. A few hours' conference between the editors
of the two bureaus would suffice for the preparation of
a classification of areas in which identical areas would be
described in identical terms, and grouped in accordance with
some uniform scheme. The significance of the "All other"
UNITED STATES 659
and "Not specified" could be indicated, and the compara-
tive interpretation of the two tables made simple. This
would not involve any change of office practice, beyond such
changes as are properly described as editorial in character;
but there would seem to be no reason to conclude that either
office would object to those slight modifications in its classi-
fications, which, if adopted, would make the statistics per-
fectly comparable as regards areas shown. It may be noted
that the census heading, "Born at Sea," if introduced in the
immigration tables, might develop an item of considerable
human interest. The discrepancies in the tables have arisen
accidentally, from the fact that the relative importance of
areas differ somewhat, according as one regards the foreign-
born population, alone, or the annual influx of aliens, alone;
but it is obvious that the question whether any given area
shall be shown separately in the census tables should not be
determined without taking into accoimt the character of
current immigration; nor should a similar question relating
to the immigration tables be determined without reference
to the composition of the foreign-born population.
Statistics of Schools and Colleges. — ^The statistics published
each year by the Bureau of Education, relating to schools
and colleges, are "collected by direct correspondence with
city school systems, universities, and colleges, and other
institutions of higher education, public and private high
schools, and other schools above the grade of elementary,"
and in the case of state common-school systems are com-
piled from reports of state superintendents. The 1913 re-
port of the Bureau presents data for more than twenty mil-
lion pupils enrolled in schools and colleges, distribulting this
school population according to grades and character of
school, and showing school attendance, number of teachers,
length of school year, salary of teachers, value of property
used for school purposes, school revenue, expenditures for
school purposes, permanent school funds, retirement and
allowance systems, degrees conferred by imiversities, gifts
and bequests, and courses of instruction. The data, spread
660 MEMORIAL VOLUME
over some six hundred pages, relate to state common schools;
universities, colleges, and technological schools; agricultural
and mechanical schools; summer schools; educational work
of the Young Men's Christian Association; high schools;
commercial and business schools; industrial schools; and
schools for the blind, deaf and feeble-minded. As regards
these several classes of schools, the statistics presented are
necessarily characterized by varying degrees of accuracy
and completeness. Even as regards the common school
systems the Bureau encounters difficulty in getting com-
plete returns. The statistical volume of the 1913 report
seems to have been issued in July, 1914 (the stamp showing
date received by the hbrary of the Department of Commerce
is July 21, 1914). In this report the data relates generally to
the school year 1912-13, but it is stated that "the difficulty
of securing prompt returns from minor school officers made
it impossible to secure consolidated public school reports
from most of the states for 1913 in time for publication in
this volume." Data for the state common school systems,
therefore, relate to the school year 1911-12.* The Bureau
*Even for this year the Bureau had received returns showing number of pupils
enrolled in each grade in the public schools from only fourteen states. Upon the
basis of these returns the enrollment by grades is estimated for the country as a whole
and by geographical divisions. The data would seem not altogether adequate even
as a basis of estimating. The 3,992,627 children in public elementary grades in the
North Atlantic Division, for example, which includes the New England and the
Middle Atlantic states, are distributed to the eight grades, by applying to this
total percentages derived from data for the state of Maine, covering 73,907 children
in the grades in that state. The total enrollment by grades for Maine is given in
the table showing distribution by grades, as 108,886, but the sum of the totals
shown for the several grades is 73,907, and this figure — ^which, so far as a cursory
examination shows, does not appear anywhere in the Report — seems to have been
used as the basis of the percentage, in distributing the 3,992,627 children in the
Division. In another table, the total receiving elementary instruction in Maine
is given as 128,210, and this is the number which in fact enters into the total of
3,992,627. So that this total for the Division is distributed by applying percentages
derived from incomplete data — covering 73,907 out of 128,210 pupils — relating to
the state of Maine. It is noted in the Report that "the one state reporting for the
North Atlantic Division may not furnish correct percentages for the division,"
and it might almost be doubted that the report for Maine is sufficiently complete to
f umi^ very accurate percentages even for the state itself.
UNITED STATES 661
of Education thus experiences the embarrassment which all
bureaus experience which undertake any extensive second-
ary compilations based upon reports over which federal con-
trol does not extend. In such cases the time required for
the compilation is determined by the most dilatory of the
primary reporting agencies.
Statistics of Banks. — ^The annual reports of the Comp-
troller of the Currency embrace statistics compiled from
reports of more than 25,000 national, state, and private
banks, and loan and trust companies, showing resources and
liabiHties and receipts and disbursements of these institu-
tions in detail, and include, also, some data relating to banks
in foreign coimtries. The condition of national banks is
compiled in monthly statements. In the annual reports of
the Comptroller is written the statistical-accounting history
of each national bank from the date of its organization dur-
ing its corporate existence, and the statistical account of
banking in the United States as a whole, and in each state
and community within the country. The total expenses of
the office for the year ended June 30, 1913, amounted to
$733,816, and for the entire period since the organization of
the office— May, 1863 to June 30, 1913— to $14,736,081.
Census Bureau Statistics. — In the case of other agencies
of the federal government, generally the collection and com-
pilation of data is undertaken either as a means of enabling
these agencies to perform more effectively their primary
duties, or as a record of their performances under statutory
mandates, or with some more or less specifically defined
promotive purpose. In the case of the Census Bureau there
are no duties imposed upon it, other than the duty of collect-
ing and compiling, in compliance with specific requirements
expressed in the laws under which the Bureau operates,
statistical data relating to population, agriculture, manufac-
tures, wealth, and, in general, to the social and economic
conditions of living and working in the commxmity. The
Census Bureau is not charged with the duty of administering
any law, or of promoting commerce or industry, or the wel-
662 MEMORIAL VOLUME
fare of any class, or with the duty of ameliorating any social
condition. The laws defining its duties do not enjoin it to
"foster, promote, and develop" any interest, but only to
"gather and compile" statistics in specified fields of inquiry.
The Census Office may, therefore, be distinguished among
government offices, as being professionally and preeminently
the statistical office of the federal government — the office
engaged principally in that statistical accounting which
determines at regular intervals the amount and character
of social progress. As regards commercial policies, and
social and economic programs, it is impartial and uncom-
mitted, but while it is not charged specifically with the duty
of promoting commerce, or industry, or the welfare of any
class, its inquiries nevertheless embrace the whole range of
social conditions which intimately involve the welfare of
the community as a whole. The character which differ-
entiates the work of the Census Bureau from that of other
offices is somewhat analogous to that which diflPerentiates
the work of the investigator from that of the practitioner
in the field, for example, of social hygiene. The practitioner
must employ scientific methods and he may collect important
data in the course of his practice. The investigator, on the
other hand, pursues some line of inquiry which may involve
the welfare of many communities, but in his character as
an investigator he is not charged with the administration
of municipal regulations safeguarding pubhc health. The
data collected by the practitioner may contribute to the
orderly and scientific development of social hygiene, but the
development of social hygiene will require that certain
inquiries shall be undertaken which can not advantageously
be assumed by the practitioner, since they do not immedi-
ately involve his efficiency or develop immediately out of his
professional activities, and siuce they may require a special
sort of expertness and training which is not required for
or acquired in practice. So, also, as regards the statistical
work of the federal government, that work done by the
administrative or promotive offices has in many fields of
UNITED STATES 663
inquiry important social and scientific character, entirely
apart from the administration or enforcement of the law,
and from the promotion of specific interests. The work of
these oflBces contributes largely to the eflBcient, orderly, and
systematic development of the statistical work of the govern-
ment. Such a development does not at all require that
every line of statistical inquiry which is of general scientific
or social importance shall be entrusted to the Census Bureau.
The statistics of foreign commerce, for example, have a
general economic as well as a specifically fiscal character, but
it does not follow from this that they should be collected
and compiled by some agency other than the Treasury; still
less, that they should be collected once by the Treasury in
its fiscal accounting, and again by the Census Bureau in its
social economic accounting. In fact these statistics are
collected by the Treasury agents, and compiled by the
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, and their dual
character is thus fairly recognized in the organization of the
statistical service of the federal government. They might,
probably equally well, be compiled by the Census Bureau,
but it is not certain that any very material gain has resulted
from the apportionment of this work to two departments,
one fiscal and the other promotive — collection of the data
to the Treasury, and compilation to the Commerce Depart-
ment. The Treasury, it may be noted, still compiles and
publishes statistics of banks, which are as pertinent to the
promotion of commerce as are the statistics of imports
and exports.
In the systematic development of the statistical work of
the government, there are, however, many important lines
of inquiry which can not advantageously be imposed upon
the administrative and promotive oflSces. In some cases
no offices have been created which represent the interests
involved — ^there is no federal bureau, for example, charged
with the registration of births and deaths; if there were, such
an agency rather than the Census Bureau might properly
compile statistics of natality and of mortality. In other
664 MEMORUL VOLUME
cases, where administrative or promotive agencies have been
established, they are not equipped for statistical inquiries
which may, nevertheless, have important administrative
or promotive value, and, in such cases, the imposition of cer-
tain statistical inquiries might impair the administrative
and promotive eflSciency of a bureau by dissipating its
resources. Again, it is true of certain inquiries that they
are fundamental as regards more than one line of adminis-
trative or promotive work, and do not necessarily pertain to,
and could not safely be entrusted to any one administrative
or promotive office. Finally, in many important lines of
inquiry which are of fundamental social importance — such,
for example, as the general enumeration of the population —
no special administrative or promotive interest is involved.
Those several lines of inquiry, which may not advantage-
ously be undertaken by the administrative or promotive
offices, constitute, in the aggregate, the work of the Census
Bureau. It might seem that with the multiplication of
offices more or less extensively engaged in statistical work
along special lines, the number of inquiries devolved upon
the Census Bureau would be decreased. In fact, however,
very few of the more important inquiries which have in the
past been entrusted to the Census Bureau, have subsequently
been transferred to other bureaus, or discontinued in the
Census Bureau. On the contrary, the number of inquiries
entrusted to the Census Bureau has been increased in recent
years and the elaboration of its work has been continuous,
until it has come properly to be regarded as the general
statistical office of the government. The explanation is to
be foimd in the fact that the work done by the Census
Bureau is itself, as well as the work of other bureaus, of a
special character, and where newly created agencies have
entered a field of census inquiry, their work has commonly
been of a character radically different from that done by the
Census Bureau. So that there has been, and is today, com-
paratively little duplication of census work in other offices.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Corpora-
UNITED STATES 665
tions, for example, have in recent years, as has been noted,
conducted extensive statistical investigations covering occu-
pations and conditions of employment in certain industries,
but neither of these bureaus could have undertaken, without
a radical expansion of its service, a census of occupations,
embracing all persons gainfully employed. In the Census
of Manufactures the law prescribes that the data shall be
so compiled as not to reveal the identity of any establish-
ment; the two bureaus mentioned have each of them made
exhaustive investigations of individual companies whose
identity has been frankly disclosed. The Department of
Agriculture has made detailed farm surveys in a number of
coimties, but it does not undertake a census of agriculture,
and its estimates of farm products, crop acreage and condi-
tions are based upon and corrected by the census returns.
In general, it is true that census inquiries are extensive and
complete beyond the capacities of other bureaus, and that
the inquiries of other oflBces, being intensive and selective,
are detailed and elaborate beyond the capacity of the Census
Bureau in its extensive work. The increase in the amount
of intensive work along special lines in other bureaus has not
in any degree lessened the necessity for the extensive orien-
tating work of the Census Bureau. On the contrary, the
increase in the number of intensive special investigations has
created new demands upon the Census Bureau for more
detail in its extensive inquiries embracing the country as a
whole.
In the year ended June 30, 1914, the publications of the
Census Bureau aggregated 15,520 pages, and in this year
the expenditures of the Bureau, which are for purely statis-
tical work, amounted to $1,338,026. Its office force num-
bered 644, and it carried on its rolls 754 special agents for
the collection of cotton statistics. In the course of a decade
the publications of the Bureau aggregate some 40,000 pages,
and its expenditures approximate $25,000,000. Upon the
occasion of the decennial census, its office force is increased
by 3,000 or 4,000, and at the last census an army of 70,000
666 MEMORIAL VOLUME
enumerators was organized, trained, and supervised in the
field work of gathering data.
Entirely independent of the general decennial census
relating to population, agriculture, occupations, manufac-
tures, and mines, the Bureau, in the course of a decade,
takes a census of manufactures, a census of wealth, debtj,
and taxation; a census of dependent, defective and de-
linquent classes which it issues in several separate reports
covering the insane and feeble-minded, paupers, and pris-
oners and juvenile delinquents; a census of rehgious bodies;
and, in cooperation with the Bureau of Fisheries, a cen-
sus of fisheries. Except in the case of manufactures, these
inquiries are not covered by the scope of the general cen-
sus. The Bureau takes quinquennially, at intervals which
do not coincide with the periods of the general census, a
census of central electric light and power plants; of street
and electric railways; and of telegraphs and telephones.
Biennially it compiles the OflScial Register of the United
States, covering some 470,000 names of civilian employees of
the government. It gathers and compiles annually statis-
tics of mortaUty for the registration area, which embraces a
population of 63,000,000, and yields returns relating to nearly
900,000 deaths in the course of a year. It collects and com-
piles each year financial statistics of some 200 cities of 30,000
or more inhabitants. It reports semi-annually statistics of
stocks of tobacco held by manufactiu-ers and dealers, and in
the course of a year issues 25 reports of data relating to the
production, supply and distribution of cotton — ^these data
being sent in by its 750 odd special agents in the field.
From time to time special inquiries are required of the
Bureau. During the past decade, for example, it has pre-
pared a report on Marriage and Divorce, covering a period
of twenty years; has compiled statistics of the federal civil
service; has compiled the census of the Philippine Islands,
and the census of Cuba; and has taken a census of Oklahoma
and Indian Territory. In 1906 it prepared a report on Trans-
portation by Water; and in 1907 a report on the Express
UNITED STATES 667
Business. Other publications have presented statistics
relating to Women at Work; Earnings of Wage Earners;
Child Labor; Negro Population; Illiteracy; Industrial Dis-
tricts; Irrigation; Municipal Electric Fire Alarm and Police
Patrol Systems; Proportion of Children and of Sexes; Age;
Vital Statistics; Forest Products; Estimates of Population;
Commercial Valuation of Railway Operating Property;
Insular and Municipal Finances, and Mineral and Electrical
Industries of Porto Rico; Geographical Distribution of
Population; Teachers; and Cities of 8,000 to 25,000 inhabi-
tants. In addition to these conventional publications,
the Biureau has prepared and pubhshed a report of permanent
historical value, "A Century of Population Growth," which
is of scientific interest to statisticians, not only for its con-
tent of data, but as well for its original methods of analysis
and presentation; and has compiled a series of volumes from
the records of the first census. ("Heads of Families — ^First
Census of the United States: 1790." One volume for each
state.) It has issued also numerous pamphlets relating to
such subjects as census methods, uniform municipal account-
ing, classification of causes of death, registration of births
and deaths, and collaboration in federal and state statistical
work; and has prepared advance summary bulletins, — such
as the bulletin issued in 1915, of some 200 pages, on the
Negro population, — ^relating to all of its main reports.
Finally, it prepares and distributes regularly to the press,
and to state officials, manufacturers and others interested,
brief summaries of its reports and bulletins, the number of
such summaries prepared in the fiscal year 1914 being 250.
The census publications which have been enumerated
include a number of analytical studies based upon census
data, and it may be noted that in undertaking such studies
the Bureau is fulfilling one chief purpose originally advanced
as an argument for establishing the Census Office on a
permanent basis. Generally, however, the publications of
the Bureau represent original data collected in the field by
its agents, and in these lines of inquiry the volume of work
668 MEMORIAL VOLUME
increases from year to year or from period to period. The
number of cities of 30,000 or more inhabitants, for example,
for which the Bureau compiles data annually, has increased
from 154 in 1905, to 199 in 1913; and in the same period,
with the extension of the registration area and the growth of
population, the number of deaths for which data are com-
piled annually has increased from 545,533, to 890,848.
Each year the number of major and of minor civil divisions
increases and coincidently the number of changes in boun-
daries which must be recorded tends to increase. Since its
estabhshment on a permanent basis the Bureau has been
continuously and extensively occupied, also, with the im-
provement of its card punching, sorting, and tabulating
machinery, to enable it to meet the exigencies of the decen-
nial census work, which at each general enumeration become
more exacting.
Other activities of the Bureau embrace its continuous
effort, in cooperation with the states and municipalities,
to improve the character of our vital statistics; and its
efforts to institute, in municipalities, more uniform and
accurate systems of accounting.
At any given time the Bureau is necessarily occupied with
many different inquiries in various stages of preparation.
The diversity of work ordinarily advanced in the course of
a year is indicated fairly in the following summary statement
from the Director's report for the fiscal year, 1914, although
necessarily from year to year the specific inquiries under
way vary:
During the fiscal year the Bureau brought to completion the deferred work of
the Thirteenth Decennial Census; began various special compilations of the Thir-
teenth Census statistics; commenced and brought well toward completion the
preparation of a "Statistical Atlas," based on data collected at the Thirteenth
Census; tabulated and published data relating to the dependent, defective, and
delinquent classes; conducted the decennial inquiry on wealth, debt, and taxation;
completed its quinquennial canvass of electrical industries and a considerable part
of the work of compiling the statistics obtained; began preparations for its quinquen-
nial census of manufactures, the field work for which will commence early in the
calendar year 1915; compiled and published the biennial Official Register of the
United States; made its regular annual collections and publications of statistics
UNITED STATES 669
relating to mortality, finances of cities, and production, distribution, and consump-
tion of cotton; completed the annual forest-products inquiry, covering the calendar
year 1912, and issued its report thereon; made its semi-annual collections and pub-
lications of statistics of stocks of leaf tobacco held by manufacturers and dealers;
and answered numerous mail requests for information contained in its records.
This summary statement indicates the diversity of work
carried on from year to year by the permanent Census
Bureau, in the seven years that intervene between the
decennial census periods. On the occasion of taking the
general census, and for a period of three years' duration, the
permanent organization is temporarily expanded to embrace,
in addition to the continuance of its annual and other
periodical compilations, the conduct of that enterprise which
is unquestionably the most considerable single statistical
undertaking of the federal government. This work of the
Bureau of the Census at the present time is, in fact, an evolu-
tion of the decennial census, instituted by the Constitution,
and utilized for many decades as the principal vehicle of
statistical inquiry. By the end of the last century the heap-
ing of inquiries upon the decennial census had proceeded to
the point where the efficient conduct and reasonably prompt
completion of the census itself became practically an impos-
sibility. General Walker likened the census to a campaign
in which a battle was fought every day — and it must be
added that in this fighting victory did not in every instance
rest with the superintendent of the census. It was inevitable
that the census work should be broken up and distributed
through the decade or that much of it should be abandoned,
and this necessity for unloading the decennial enumerations
required the establishment of a permanent bureau in
Washiugton, which should assume the conduct of the several
inquiries which could be initiated independently of the
general enumeration.
A summary account of the aggregation of inquiries in the
decennial census will indicate the historical origin of the
more important work of the permanent Bureau.
670 MEMORIAL VOLUME
While the institution of the census seems to have been a
political incident, httle regarded at the time except as a
practical means of apportioning representatives and taxes,*
its subsequent development seems to have resulted largely
from that "passion for statistics" which General Walker
declared to be a temperamental characteristic of Americans.
It was originally expected that the double purpose of the
census would tend to insure accuracy — the motive to over-
statement which might attach to the basis of representation
being neutraKzed by the consideration that taxes would
be increased in proportion as population was overstated.
The resort to indirect taxes by the federal government, how-
ever, has largely removed this countervailing influence, and
it is true that certain communities have at different censuses
made exaggerated returns of their population.
The Census of 1790 f returned the number of free white
males over, and the number under sixteen years of age, the
number of free white females without distinction by age, all
*It has been noted that the Articles of Confederation, as originally reported in
1776, provided for a triennial enumeration of the population, as a basis of appor-
tioning the charges of war and other expenditiu'es for the general welfare, and that,
although the basis of apportionment in the Articles as finally adopted was made the
value of land. Congress was authorized to make requisitions of men for the land
forces in proportion to the white population of the several states. The Articles
of Confederation, according to Mr. Garfield, "imquestionably contemplated a.
national census to include a valuation of land and an enumeration of population. "
Mr. Garfield, who, as Chairman of the House Committee on the Census in 1869,
made an extensive inquiry into the origins of the Census, refers, in a paper read
before the American Social Science Association in 1869, to an often quoted passage
in Moreau de JonAes "Elements de Statistique, " to the effect that "the United
States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel," namely, "that
of a people who instituted the statistics of their country on the very day that they
formed their government, and who regulated, in the same instrument, the census
of their citizens, their civil and political rights, and the destinies of the country,"
— and observes that "it must be confessed, however, that American founders looked
only to practical ends," and that "a careful search through the 'Madison Papers'
has failed to reveal that any member of the Convention considered the census in
its scientific bearings."
tin the following account of the scope of the several censuses, 1790-1890, the
writer has drawn data freely from the "History of the United States Census, pre-
pared for the Senate Committee on the Census, " by Carroll D. Wright, assisted
by William C. Hunt.
UNITED STATES 671
other free persons, and slaves — without, in the case of the
last two classes, distinction by either sex or age. The pub-
lished returns occupy a thin octavo volume of 52 pages.
At the Censuses of 1800 and of 1810, five age classes were
distinguished and the age classification was extended to
white females. At the Census of 1810, moreover, the
marshals were instructed to take, at the time of the popula-
tion enumeration, imder the direction of the Secretary of the
Treasury, "an account of the several manufacturing estab-
hshments and manufactures within their several districts,"
and to make these returns to the Secretary of the Treasury
at the same time that they made return of the population
to the Secretary of State. The sum of $40,000 was appro-
priated as compensation to the marshals and assistants for
taking this account of manufactures, and $3,000 for making
a digest of the "number, nature, extent, situation, and value
of the arts and manufactures of the United States." This
digest, prepared by Mr. Tench Coxe, "exhibiting a collection
of facts, evincing their benefactions to agriculture, com-
merce, navigation, and the fisheries, and their subserviency
to the public defence, with an indication of certain existing
modes of conducting them," comprised 233 pages.
At the Census of 1820, slaves and free colored persons
were returned by sex in four age classes, and the population
schedule of inquiries called for the number of foreigners not
naturalized, and the number of persons engaged in agricul-
ture, commerce, and manufactures. Returns relating to
manufacturing establishments were made covering fourteen
inquiries. These returns, with the population returns, were
made to the Secretary of State. The population report
composed a folio of 160 pages, and the report on manufacture
ing establishments a folio of 100 pages.
At the Census of 1830, for the first time, uniform printed
schedules were used. The census was restricted to popula-
tion, which was returned in the case of the whites, by quin-
quennial age classes, and in the case of slaves and the free
colored population by six age classes. At this census, also,
672 MEMORIAL VOLUME
the number of white and of colored persons who were deaf
and dumb, classified by three age periods, and the number of
the blind, and the number of white aliens were returned.
Forty three clerks were employed in the office of the Secre-
tary of State in revising the returns, which were published
originally in a large foho of 163 pages.
The tendency to extend the scope of the census beyond
the requirements of the Constitution had been in evidence
at each enumeration, and had resulted in a considerable
amplification of the decennial schedule, but the census was
still, as compared with its subsequent development, a simple
affair, and not entirely disproportionate to the constitu-
tional intention. In 1838, however, President Van Buren
raised the question in his annual message to Congress,
whether the scope of the census "might not be usefully
extended by causing it to embrace authentic statistical
returns of the great interests specially entrusted to or
necessarily effected by the legislation of Congress." This
suggests that the scope of the census may constitutionally
embrace the general welfare of the community and virtually
removes all limits to the range of statistical inquiries by the
federal government. It is an interesting historical fact that
while in subsequent decades no material difficulties were
raised to the pihng of inquiries upon the census until it
expanded to encyclopedic proportions, grave doubts were
nevertheless entertained as to the constitutional authority
of Congress to institute statistical inquiries of a general
nature independently of the decennial census. There was
of course no logic in the philosophy that Congress might
engage in statistical accounting for the general welfare
through the instrumentality of the census, but that it might
not institute any other agency of inquiry in this broad field.
Congress seems to have responded freely to Presid,ent
Van Buren's suggestion, by providing, in the act for the
Sixth Census, that the marshals should "return in statistical
tables ... all such information in relation to mines,
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and schools, as will
UNITED STATES 673
exhibit a full view of the pursuits, industry, education, and
resources of the country." The inquiries prescribed em-
braced, in addition to the returns of age, sex, and color,
returns relating to the deaf, dumb, and blind, the number
of insane and idiots at public and at private charge, the num-
ber in each family employed in mining; in agriculture; in
commerce; in manufactures and trades; in navigation of the
ocean; in navigation of canals, lakes, and rivers; and in the
learned professions, including engineers; also, the number,
by name and age, of Revolutionary War pensioners; the
nimiber of universities or colleges, of academies and grammar
schools, and of primary and common schools, with the num-
ber of students or scholars, and the number of scholars at
public charge; the number of white persons twenty years of
age and over who were unable to write; and on a separate
schedule returns were to be made showing product, capital,
number of employees, and number of establishments, for
mining, fisheries, and manufactures; agricultural and forest
products; number of commercial and commission houses,
and of stores; number of men employed in internal transpor-
tation, and in the lumber trade; and other data relating to
trade groups and classes of establishments. The returns
were pubhshed in three volumes, covering, respectively,
population, industry and commerce, and pensioners.
The range of the inquiries at this census seems to have
greatly exceeded the range of administrative capacity and
control, and the report of the Census of 1840 gave occasion,
by its general inaccuracy, for vigorous complaint and for
the pi-eparation of memorials to Congress, one of which was
prepared by a committee of the American Statistical Associa-
tion. This committee detected every species of error in the
printed report. They found, for example, that "the greater
proportion of ignorance [illiteracy] is foimd in those places
where the opportunities for education are most liberally
oflFered, and most extensively used"; that "every proportion
of the Negro population [in Massachusetts] from seven,
where there are none, as we have shown, in some towns, to
u
674 MEMORIAL VOLUME
less than a two-thousandth, as recorded of others, is declared
to be lunatic"; that the number of colleges, as stated in
the census, was probably twice the true number; — that in
returning employments, in some cases the whole population
seemed to have been classified according to the employment
of the head of the family; in other cases only males 21 and
over had been noticed; in other cases all who were able to
work; and in other cases in many counties none were returned
as having any employment. The committee had examined
the manuscript copies of the census filed in the district
clerk's office in Boston, and had found that "the first manu-
script copy, with the householder's names gives one account,
the second manuscript, the condensed copy [showing totals
for towns and cities] gives another account, and the printed
edition gives a third and diflFerent version of the same
facts," and they urged Congress, if the errors could not be
corrected, oflicially to disavow the census.
The errors of the Sixth Census were taken under consider-
ation by committees of the House and the Senate. The
House Committee reported that the errors constituted an
argument for the creation of a bureau of statistics, and the
Senate Committee urged legislation which would insure
accuracy in the census to be taken in 1850. An act of
March 3, 1849, constituted the Secretary of State, the
Attorney-General and Postmaster-General a board, charged
with the duty of preparing and printing the forms and
schedules to be used in the Census of 1850. This board
prepared six schedules which were incorporated in the census
act of May 23, 1850, providing for returns relating to (1)
free inhabitants, (2) slave inhabitants, (3) mortality, (4)
productions of agriculture, (5) products of industry, and (6)
social statistics. It should be noted, also, that the organic
act of the Department of the Interior, approved March 3,
1849, transferred the Census to that Department.
Under these statutory schedules, the most important
innovation at the Census of 1850 consisted in substituting
the individual for the family, as the unit of enumeration,
UNITED STATES 673
on the population schedule, and in providing for returns for
each farm and for each establishment in other inquiries,
instead of aggregates for enumeration districts. In previous
censuses the number of persons of each sex, age, and color
in each family had been returned; at the Census of 1850, for
each individual in the family, data was returned, so far as
pertinent to the individual, relating to age, sex, color, owned
real estate, place of birth, school attendance, literacy, occu-
pation (for males over fifteen years of age), whether married
within the year, and whether deaf, blind, insane or idiotic,
a pauper, or a convict. Data relating to slaves, also, were
returned by individuals. The mortality schedule called for
detailed return of data — including cause of death and many
items returned for the living — relating to each person who
had died during the year. The agricultural schedule pro-
vided for a return for each farm, covering 46 items, including
acreage improved and unimproved, value of farms, value of
implements and machinery; number of specified classes of
live stock; quantity produced for 29 crops and value of
animals slaughtered. The schedule for industries, covering
manufactures, mining, fisheries, and mercantile business, in
the case of each business where the annual product amounted
to $500, contained 14 inquiries calling for a return of capital
invested, quantity and value of product, and of materials
and fuel, motive power, and average number of male and of
female employees. The schedule for social statistics called
for returns by enumerated subdivisions, covering valuation
of real estate; annual taxes; colleges, academies, and schools;
seasons and crops; libraries; newspapers and periodicals;
religion; pauperism; crime; and average wages.
At the Census of 1850, for the first time all of the classify-
ing and compilation of the data as recorded by the assistant
marshals was done in the central office in Washington.
During the years 1852 and 1853, an average of 128 persons
were employed in the Central Office. The general results
of the population census, with analytical text and tables,
were printed in a volume of 1,158 pages in 1853; the report
676 MEMORIAL VOLUME
on mortality in 1855; the report on manufactures in 1859;
an abstract of the first results was printed in December,
1851, and a compendium in 1854. The cost of the census
was $1,423,350. With the Census of 1850, the decennial
enumeration began to assume modern proportions and
character.
The Censuses of 1860 and 1870 were taken under the Act
of 1850, with only minor changes in the schedules for 1860.
The schedule changes in 1870 were more numerous and more
considerable, bringing into the population schedule, for
example, the inquiry as to foreign parentage, and as to
month of birth of persons born within the year, and dis-
tinguishing Chinese and Japanese in the returns. The sched-
ule for slaves and the distinction of free and slave in the
colored population was, of course, no longer applicable. In
1869, Mr. Garfield, as Chairman of the House Committee
on the Census, presented a carefully prepared report, accom-
panied by a bill providing for a radical change in the methods
and organization of the census. This bill passed the House,
but failed to pass the Senate.* Many of its essential pro-
visions were, however, incorporated in the legislation pro-
viding for the Tenth Census. From the administration side
the chief defect in the law of 1850 was clearly that the field
work of enumeration was imposed upon judicial officers, the
marshals, who were charged with other duties, were not
appointed by the Superintendent of the Census, and were
only partially subject to his control. The legislation pre-
ceding the Tenth Census provided for the appointment of
not to exceed 150 supervisors of the census by the Superin-
tendent, this number being more than twice the number of
marshals in the country. The supervisors were to indicate
to the Superintendent the apportionment of their districts
into subdivisions, and to designate to him suitable persons
*Mr. Adams, in a communication to the Nation, of February 14, 1870, remarks
that "it is a very curious coincidence that the machinery adopted in the House bill
would, owing to the organization by Congressional districts, have thrown all the
patronage into the House of Representatives, while the marshals are usually nomi-
nated by Senators. "
UNITED STATES 677
for enumerators. The number of enumeration districts was
greatly increased over the number at the preceding census,
and the average area and population to be covered by each
enumerator correspondingly decreased. The enumerator
was instructed to forward his original schedules, instead of
copies, to the supervisor. Each enumerator was required
to make daily reports to the Superintendent and to the
supervisor of his district. The enumeration was to be com-
pleted in two weeks in cities of over 10,000 inhabitants, and
in one month in other districts, instead of approximately
four months as at the Ninth Census.
Five general schedules wiere prescribed by law, relating,
respectively, to population, agriculture, manufactures, mor-
tality, and social statistics; and the Superintendent was
authorized to prepare special schedules for separate indus-
tries and to cover special inquiries. Over two hundred such
schedules were prepared. He might further withdraw the
schedules of manufactures from the enumerators, wherever
he deemed it expedient to do so, and employ experts and
special agents who were not restricted in their inquiries to
local areas. The mortality schedule might be withdrawn
from the enumerators in localities where the registration of
deaths was sufficiently complete to provide in local official
records the data required. The collection of social statistics,
also, was taken from the enumerators, and devolved upon
experts and special agents. The enumeration was to embrace
returns rielating to Indians not taxed, to the condition
and operations of railroad corporations, express companies,
and insurance companies; and the area of enumeration
was extended to include Alaska. The printed reports of
the census comprised twenty two large quarto volumes,
aggregating 19,305 pages, the last report being issued in
1888.
The methods employed at the Census of 1890 were not
materially different from those employed in 1880, although
the inquiries were somewhat modified, and extended to
embrace returns relating to recorded indebtedness of private
678 MEMORIAL VOLUME
corporations and individuals; to Civil War veterans, and
their widows; and to the negro population, distinguishing
blacks, mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons. Four general,
eight supplemental, and a large number of special schedules
were used, and the Hollerith electric tabulating system was
adopted for the more elaborate compilations. The pub-
lished report embraced twenty five quarto volumes, aggre-
gating 21,410 pages, the final report being issued in 1897.
As regards volume and scope, the Censuses of 1880 and
1890 mark the extreme limits in the development of the
decennial census. At the Census of 1880, 215 and at the
Census of 1890, 233 general and special schedules were used,
comprehending in the case of each census more than 13,000
inquiries. The Census Office as organized for the Eleventh
Census comprised twenty five main divisions, including a
division of Geography; of Population; of Vital Statistics; of
Church Statistics; of Educational Statistics; of Pauperism
and Crime; of National and State Finances; of Farms,
Homes, and Mortgages; of Agriculture; of Manufactures;
of Mines and Mining; of Fish and Fisheries; of Transporta-
tion; of Insurance; of Special Classes; of Alaska; of Indians;
of Social Statistics of Cities; and of Revision and Results —
besides the purely administrative divisions which dealt with
appointments, disbursements, and printing. This was the
organization as described by Superintendent Porter in
December, 1891. It is interesting to note the origins of
this organization, as described by the Superintendent, in a
hearing before a House Committee, March 25, 1892, on the
proposal to establish a permanent bureau. Mr. Porter
gives the following account of his experience, which must
have been essentially that of every Superintendent of the
Census.
The Superintendent in both the last two censuses [1880 and 1890] was appointed
in April of the year preceding the enumeration, but when I was appointed I had
nothing but one clerk and a messenger, and a desk with some white paper on it. I
sent over to the Patent Office building to find out all I could get of the remnants
of ten years ago, and we got some old books and schedules and such things as we
could dig out. ... I was not able to get more than three of the old men from
UNITED STATES 679
this dty. ... I knew most of the old census people. Some of them were dead
and some in private business. I succeeded in getting one from Colorado. . . .
I was glad to get him. . . . With these men we started up the organization.*
One of the principal excellencies of statistics, when they
constitute a series of indefinite extension, as the census
statistics do, is that character of comparability which they
derive from continuity in the method of their collection by
an agency permanently established and guided in its pro-
cedure by the traditions and experience of its own past.
The final volume of the Tenth Census was issued late in
1888, completing a national inventory which had occupied
and trained hundreds of experts and thousands of clerks;
in April, 1889, Mr. Porter began to organize for a similar
enterprise, with one clerk as the living representative of the
old organization, and a white sheet of paper as the visible
record of past achievements. Congress, by an Act of Feb-
ruary 22, 1890, added certain inquiries to the population
schedule, and thus, according to Mr. Porter, "But little over
sixty days were allowed for the printing of 20,000,000 sched-
ules and their distribution, accompanied by printed instruc-
tions to the 50,000 enumerators all over the country, many
of them remote from railroads or telegraph lines." Mr.
Porter states that some 2,400 forms and blanks had been
devised to cover the 150 distinct lines of inquiry authorized
by law for the Census of 1890. "Now to guide us in getting
up these blanks," he continues, "we had only a few scrap-
books that someone had had the forethought to use in sav-
ing some of the forms of blanks in the last census. He had
taken them home, a few copies at a time, and put them into
scrapbooks. The government had taken no care of these
things in 1885, when the oflBce was closed up. Some of them
had been sold for waste paper, others had been burned, and
others lost."
No resume of the protracted agitation for the establish-
ment of a permanent bureau for the conduct of the census
work is required. The select committee of the House which
*H. R. 2393, S2nd Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 28.
680 MEMORIAL VOLUME
had under consideration the memorial of the American
Statistical Association on the errors of the Sixth Census,
reported in 1844 that they knew of no way of avoiding such
errors "so easy and practicable as by establishment of a
bureau of statistics," and this same committee in 1845 pre-
sented two other reports urging in each the estabhshment of
a bureau of commerce and statistics in the Treasury Depart-
ment. Superintendent De Bow in the Compendium of the
Seventh Census (1850) expressed the conviction that "unless
there is machinery in advance at the seat of government no
census can ever be properly taken and published." Six
reports of the Secretary of the Interior, 1860-1865, recom-
mended the establishment of a bureau of statistics, and, as
has been noted. Director Delmar of the Treasury Bureau
of Statistics, established in 1866, regarded that bureau as
the proper agency for taking the census, and even collected
population data through the internal revenue service to
demonstrate the capacity of his bureau for decennial census
service. The multiplication of inquiries at the Censuses of
1880 and 1890 made the need for some adequate provision
for the orderly and eflficient conduct of these inquiries
apparent, and on February 16, 1891, the Senate by resolution
directed the Secretary of the Interior " to consider the expe-
diency of the establishment of a permanent Census Bureau."
In compliance with this resolution. Superintendent Porter
prepared a report which was transmitted December 7, 1891,
with the draft of a bill. Congress was memorialized by
boards of trade and chambers of commerce, hearings were
held, and several bills introduced but no legislation resulted.
Several years later, in March, 1896, the Commissioner of
Labor was directed by a joint resolution to report "a plan
for a permanent Census OflBce." In this year a joint com-
mittee of the American Statistical and the American Eco-
nomic Associations presented a memorial "praying the pas-
sage of the legislation for the more effective organization of
the United States Census," and calling the attention of
Congress "to the importance of establishing at once a per-
UNITED STATES 681
manent and independent census office." This memorial
summarized the defects of the temporary organization under
three heads: "(1) accumulation of inquiries at the same
period of time; (2) the lack of continuity in census work; and
(3) the haste with which the whole machinery of the census
£9 placed in motion." The Commissioner of Labor sub-
mitted a report and a tentative plan on December 6, 1896.
A hearing was held by the Senate Committee on the Census
in January, 1897. Bills corresponding closely to the draft
submitted by the Commissioner of Labor were introduced in
both houses, and subsequently similar bills were introduced
devolving the census work upon the Department of Labor.
None of these bills was enacted into law. At the following
session of Congress a bill providing for the taking of the
Twelfth Census passed the Senate, and was referred to a
House Committee from which it did not emerge. At the
third session of this Congress a substitute for this bill passed
the House. The act providing for the Twelfth Census,
finally approved March 3, 1899, provided "that nothing
herein contained shall be construed to estabhsh a census
bureau permanent beyond the Twelfth Census."
This act, however, restricted the scope of the Twelfth
Census to four subjects — ^population, mortality, agriculture,
and manufactures — and authorized the Director, after com-
pletion of the work on the schedules of agriculture and manu-
factures, "to collect statistics relating to the defective,
dependent, and delinquent classes; to crime, including
judicial statistics pertaining thereto; ... to social
statistics of cities; to public indebtedness, valuation, taxa-
tion, and expenditures; to religious bodies; to transportation
by water, and express business; to mines, mining, quarries,
and minerals, and the production and value thereof, includ-
ing gold . . . and silver mines, and the number of men
employed, the average daily wage, average working time,
and aggregate earnings ... to savings banks and
other savings institutions, mortgage, loan, and investment,
companies, and similar institutions; to the fishing industry
682 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in cooperation with the Bureau of Fisheries; and every five
years to collect statistics relating to street railways, electric
light and power, telephone, and telegraph business."
It will be noted that these subjects cover in general the
main lines of inquiry conducted by the permanent Bureau,
and, by an act approved March 6, 1902, the office created
by the Act of 1899 was made a permanent office. By the
organic Act of February 14, 1903, this office was transferred
from the Interior Department to the Department of Com-
merce and Labor, now the Department of Commerce.
By subsequent legislation provision has been made for the
development of the work of the permanent Bureau* to cover
annual collection of mortahty data from the registration
area, and collection and compilation of statistics of cotton
and of tobacco; and by a Department circular compilation
of annual statistics of cities of 30,000 and over was trans-
ferred from the Bureau of Labor to the Census Bureau.
The inquiries formerly embraced in the general census have,
therefore, been to a considerable extent distributed through
the decade, and the Thirteenth Census was accordingly
restricted to inquiries relating to population and occupations,
agriculture, manufactures, and mines and quarries.
Temporary Agencies of Statistical Inquiry. — ^The foregoing
account refers to the work of statistical offices which have
been permanently established under organic acts of Con-
gress. Some reference should, however, be made to the
numerous statistical inquiries, some of them resulting in
extensive and elaborate compilations of data, gathered
under instruction of congressional resolves, or by temporary
commissions or boards appointed and operating in compli-
ance with the provisions of special enactments of Congress.
The so-called Aldrich report from the Senate Committee
on Finance, dated July 19, 1892, on "Retail prices and
*The writer has given a more detaSed account of the work of the permanent
Bureau during the first decade following its establishment, in an article entitled
"The permanent Census Bureau: a decade of work," published in the Quarterly
Publications of the American Statistical Association for December. 1913.
UNITED STATES 683
wages," and the report from the same committee, dated
March 3, 1893, on "Wholesale prices, wages and transporta-
tion," may be cited as an instance of an extensive statistical
inquiry resulting in an elaborate compilation of data, the
work being done under instruction of a Senate resolve of
March 3, 1891. These reports, extending back, in the case
of wholesale prices and wages, over a period of more than
fifty years, presented one of the most detailed compilations
of price and wage data which had been undertaken by any
government, and provided the raw material upon which
exhaustive studies of the course of prices in the United
States since the Civil War have been based. The data of
the Aldrich reports are still used in determining index figures
of price movements in tables extending over this period.
An act of June 18, 1898, provided for the appointment of
a commission "to investigate questions pertaining to immi-
gration, to labor, to agriculture, to manufacturing, and to
business," and the final report of this commission, known
as the Industrial Commission, was submitted to Congress
in February, 1902. The complete report comprised nine-
teen volumes, and presented, to quote the words of the
chairman, "a substantially complete epitome of the indus-
trial life of the nation and of the important changes in busi-
ness methods which have taken place in recent years."*
This report is necessarily to a very considerable extent
statistical in character.
The Immigration Commission was created by Section 39
of the Immigration Act of February 20, 1907, which in-
structed the Commission to make "fuUinquiry, examination,
and investigation, by sub-committee or otherwise, into the
subject of immigration." The complete report of the
Commission constituted 42 volumes, which contain a statis-
tical review of immigration to the United States during the
period from 1820 to 1910; statistics relating to the distribu-
tion of immigrants as component elements in our population,
covering the period from 1850 to 1900; emigration conditions
•Letter of transmittal of the Final Report, February 10, 190ie.
684 MEMORIAL VOLUME
in Europe; the occupation of immigrants of the first and
second generation living in the United States; immigrant
banks; fecundity of immigrant women; and, in general, to
the social and economic condition of immigrants and of
descendants of immigrants living in urban and rural com-
munities in dififerent sections of the country.
The United States Monetary Commission was created by
an act approved May 30, 1908, which instructed the Com-
mission "to inquire into and report to Congress, at the
earliest date practicable, what changes are necessary or
desirable in the monetary system of the United States, or
in the laws relating to banking and currency. " It is stated
in the Commission's report that the act providing for its
appointment "was a direct consequence of the panic of
1907." The Commission conducted hearings in the larger
cities of the country; it collected monographs upon banking
in thirteen foreign countries and in the United States; mem-
bers and representatives of' thie Commission visited foreign
countries for personal interviews and conferences; and "by
means of special statistical inquiries framed upon a uniform
plan and directed to the leading banks of Great Britain,
France, and Germany," the Commission "collected more
complete statistical information with regard to the banks of
these countries than has ever been collected before, while,
by a series of special reports from all national and State
banks and trust companies in the United States, the Com-
mission has been able for the first time to present reports
from all banks in the country upon a uniform basis."*
The full report of the Commission, completed early in 1912,
comprises twenty-four volumes, and is to a very large degree
essentially a statistical report.
Under Section 2 of the Act of August 5, 1909, President
Taft appointed a Tariff Board of three members " to cooper-
ate with the State Department in the administration of the
maximum and minimum clause of that act, . . . and
then to investigate industrial conditions and costs of pro-
*Report of the National Monetary Commission, Vol. XXIV, pp. 5-6.
UNITED STATES 685
duction at home and abroad with a view to determining to
what extent existing tariff rates actually exemplify the pro-
tective principle, viz., that duties should be made adequate,
and only adequate, to equalize the difference in cost of
production at home and abroad." This board, subse-
quently enlarged to five members, submitted several reports
to the President, including a report on wool and woolens
(Schedule K), on cotton manufactures (Schedule I), and on
pulp and news-print paper industry. These reports deal
largely with statistics of relative costs and prices in different
sections of the United States and in foreign countries.
Of the report on Schedule K, President Taft expressed the
opinion that "no legislative body has ever had presented to
it a more complete and exhaustive report than this on so
difficult and complicated a subject as the relative cost of
wool and woolens the world over."*
Under a Senate resolution of February 7, 1910, a Select
Committee on Wages and Prices was established, and
instructed "to make an exhaustive investigation into the
cost of living and any increase in the same since 1900; to
ascertain whether the prices of the necessaries of life which
enter into the general use and consumption of the people
have, since the year 1900, been increased; and if so, to ascer-
tain the cause or causes which have influenced said increase. "
This committee instituted hearings and in 1900 reported, in
four volumes of over 2,000 pages, the results of its " investi-
gation relative to wages and prices of commodities. " By a
resolution of October 20, 1913, the Senate ordered printed
"the evidence secured by the American Commission in
cooperation with the United States Commission on their
inquiry into the agricultural credit and cooperative systems
of European countries. This volume, a quarto of over
1,000 pages, contains a very considerable amount of sta-
tistical data relating to agricultural cooperation in Europe.
More recently the Commission on Industrial Relations has
*Me89age to Congreas, December 20, 1911.
686 MEMORIAL VOLUME
made a report presenting the results of statistical and general
inquiries covering a wide range of topics.
Other commissions in recent years, such as the Commission
on National Grants to Vocational Education, have gathered
and compiled data along special lines of inquiry, to provide
a basis for recommending specific legislation in Congress.
In the case of each of the investigations which have been
noted, the inquiry has, in fact, been undertaken for the
purpose of providing Congress with such information as it
required to enable it to formulate legislative enactments, —
in the field, for example, of tariff revision, of trust regulation,
of immigration, of banking and currency reform, of educa-
tion, and of rural credits.
Organization of the Statistical Service. — No organization
of the statistical work of the government, which regards
that work simply as the collection and compilation of numer-
ical data, will prove either efficient or economical. The
orderly development and effective apportionment of this
work requires that account shall be taken of the services and
equipment available in the executive offices, and of the
intimate dependence of administrative and promotive fimc-
tions upon special statistical services. Other considera-
tions, also, it has been pointed out, must be regarded, such,
for example, as the possible effect of concentration in reduc-
ing those in charge of important statistical inquiries to the
position of subordinates, subject to a control which, while
it may not materially increase efficiency or effect any
material economy, may, nevertheless, so distribute responsi-
bility as to diminish personal interest and pride, and esprit
de corps. There is comparatively little economy in the mere
aggregation of statistical services under single executive
control, and this single control may be so extended as to
impair the efficiency of the administrative offices. The
cases where economy will result from centralization are
obvious, and are mainly those involving inquiries which
require the employment for brief periods of a large office
and field force, and of an extensive equipment. Where a
UNITED STATES 687
bureau conducts a number of inquiries of this character it
may be possible by taking up the inquiries in succession to
keep the office and field force and the equipment constantly
employed. Historically the apportionment of the statistical
work of the government to the several offices has been
determined somewhat accidentally, and the actual appor-
tionment at any given time has not been in conformity with
any ideal scheme; but, on the other hand, no scheme of
apportionment, however perfect it may be, regarded as a
picture of an orderiy disposition of statistical services, can
be regarded as ideal, which does not consider each line of
statistical inquiry from the point of view of the administra-
tive office, and as a means of performing prescribed functions
which are not statistical. The orderly and systematic
arrangement of the whole work of the government may
involve some degree of disorder and dispersion in the statis-
tical service. But statistics are not collected and compiled
for the purpose of being done in an orderly manner, nor is
the orderly collection and compilation of statistics the prime
motive of the executive offices. The orderly and systematic
development of the statistical work of the government, as
statistical work, is perhaps of interest principally to the
academic statistician, whose interests range freely over the
whole field of the science of statistics, and who perceives
more clearly than others the artistic value and convenience
for scientific exploitation of such an arrangement.
The Act of 1903, establishing the Department of Com-
merce and Labor, effected an extensive rearrangement of the
statistical service of the government by transferring the
principal statistical offices to the new Department, and by
creating two new bureaus whose work was essentially
statistical. The act brought under single executive control
the independent Department of Labor; the Bureau of the
Census — transferred from the Interior Department; the
Bureau of Statistics, the Bureau of Immigration, the Bureau
of Navigation, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the National
Bureau of Standards, the Steamboat Inspection Service,
688 MEMORIAL VOLUME
and the Lighthouse Board — transferred from the Treasury
Department; the Bureau of Foreign Commerce (for merger
with the Bureau of Statistics) — ^from the State Department;
and the independent Bureau of Fisheries. By this aggrega-
tion of bureaus the Department of Commerce and Labor
was entrusted with the conduct of the more important lines
of stiatistical inquiry undertaken by the federal government,
covering the fields of population, manufactures, agriculture,
occupations, vital statistics, internal commerce, shipping,
foreign commerce, foreign markets, labor, corporations, and
immigration. The organic act seems, in fact, to have con-
templated a more or less complete centralization of the
government's statistical work, since it authorized the Presi-
dent "by order in writing, to transfer at any time the whole
or any part of any office, bureau, division or other branch
of the pubhc service engaged in statistical or scientific work,"
from any other department — the bureaus and work of the
Department of Agriculture being excepted. No transfers
have been made under this provision. It is further provided
in the act that the Secretary of Commerce and Labor may
"call upon other departments of the government for statis-
tical data and results obtained by them; and . . . may
coUate, arrange, and publish such statistical information so
obtained in such manner as to him may seem wise." He is
empowered also "to rearrange the statistical work of the
bureaus and offices . . . and to consolidate any of the
statistical bureaus and offices transferred." By an irony of
fate the consolidation which, as it seemed upon investigation,
was most unquestionably required to avoid duplication of
work and to eflfect real economy, was a consoUdation of the
Bureau of Manufactures with the Bureau of Statistics, and
this consohdation under an interpretation of the law —
which it must be admitted is not ambiguous — could not be
made, because the Bureau of Manufactures, as it happened,
had not been "transferred" to, but had been created in the
Department of Commerce and Labor. The Secretary
appointed two commissions to investigate and report upon
UNITED STATES 689
the arrangement of the statistical work, and these commis-
sions each recommended the consolidation which could not
be made under the law as interpreted.
The Act of March 4,. 1913, establishing the Department
of Labor, separated two important statistical offices from
the single control which had been extended over them in
1903, by transferring to the new Department the Bureau of
Labor and the Bureau of Immigration. The Act of 1915,
establishing the Federal Trade Commission, has set up
another important statistical office which is independent of
over-head executive control. It would appear, therefore,
that the pohcy of centralization of the statistical service of
the government under single control culminated in the Act
of February 14, 1903, and that there has been in recent years
a tendency to segregate important services, and even to give
them executive independence.
A survey of the legislation under which the statistical
work of the government is done, seems to justify the general
statement that responsibility for the character of that work
rests chiefly, if not entirely, with the executive offices.
Congress has delegated discretionary power to these offices,
amply sufficient to provide for the systematic and orderly
development of their statistical work, and for coordination
of the work of the several offices. It has enacted legislation
under which the functions of the several bureaus are suffi-
ciently well defined to avoid serious duplication of work
if the discretionary powers granted to the bureaus and
departments are wisely exercised. In the past by far the
greater amount of duplication and overlapping has resulted
from the exercise of discretionary powers, permissive but
not mandatory under the statutes. Improvement of our
federal statistics is, therefore, primarily a problem, not of
legislation, but of executive service, and of such administra-
tive reorganization and reapportionment of statistical work
as is permitted under the laws now in force.
45
THE WORK OF THE SEVERAL STATES OF THE
UNITED STATES IN THE FIELD OF
STATISTICS*
By Chaeles F. Gettbmy
Director, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics
A comprehensive survey of the official statistical activities
of the several states of the Union would be, at best, a long
and difficult undertaking, though it would conceivably have
its conapensations in the fulfilment if one could but feel rea-
sonably assured that the great mass of material requiring
examination were worthy of the effort involved. But while
the task of preparing this paper has been pursued laboriously
enough and has embraced an exhaustive examination of the
available statistical reports and relevant statutes of the 48
states of the Union, it must be confessed that the results
are somewhat disappointing. The statistical output of
many of the states is confusing in its complexity and diver-
sity and often of little or no scientific value. The statutory
provisions by which elaborate compilations have been au-
thorized seem to have become, in numerous instances,
practically dead letters, and yet to support the collection
and publication of masses of figures which defy analysis or
constructive application to real economic problems, there is
annually expended in the United States an enormous ag-
gregate of public moneys. The best that we can hope to
do in the present instance is, by a sort of bird's-eye view,
to look upon a few of the beginnings of statistical endeavor
in the states and to indicate where an occasional milestone
of progress has been set.
The statistical work of the several states embraces a great
variety of unrelated subjects, data regarding which are
* In the preparation of this paper the writer Irishes to acknowledge the valued
assistance, in research and the examination of reports and statutes, of Mr. Roswell
F. Phelps, of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 691
gathered and compiled by bureaus and departments whose
functions and activities sometimes overlap, even in the same
state, and which have very little interstate coordination.
Most of the states have created organs of government with
titles which would indicate that they were intended pri-
marily to be statistical bureaus, but the function of gath-
ering, compiling, analysing, and disseminating statistical
information has too often found merely a perfunctory ex-
pression, and almost invariably has been subordinated to the
performance of purely executive duties, especially in the
field of labor and industry. On the other hand, there are
bureaus, boards, and commissions established for adminis-
trative purposes which are realizing, to an increasing degree,
the absolute necessity of statistical data carefully gathered
and compiled, this condition being especially true with re-
spect to the enforcement of factory inspection and the ad-
ministration of workmen's compensation laws. But while
the full scientific value of this class of data, commonly re-
ferred to as accident statistics, cannot yet be properly ap-
praised, since they are still in their infancy, the situation is
full of encouragement, and a definite beginning has been
made toward establishing a uniform classification and termi-
nology of accidents, which the several state departments and
boards throughout the country propose to use as the basis of
their records and reports.
Certain classes of statistical compilations, for example,
those based upon the records of penal and charitable insti-
tutions, hospitals and asylums for the insane and feeble-
minded, railroad and other public service corporations, high-
ways and traffic, savings banks, life, fire and other forms of
insurance, public education, public health, etc., are not
given consideration here since such data do not usually pre-
tend to be more than a reflection or a summary of adminis-
trative activities.
Vital statistics, so-called, that is, data relating to births
and deaths, are in a different category, and many states are
performing excellent work in this field and are making real
692 MEMORIAL VOLUME
contributions to statistical science, notwithstanding the
handicap of inadequate appropriations and other considera-
tions which sometimes interfere with sustained and intelli-
gent continuity of achievement. The work of the states in
this field, however, interiocks with that of the federal gov-
ernment, which is reviewed elsewhere in this volume, so that
it has not been deemed necessary to expand upon it in this
connection.
For these and other practical reasons, therefore, this paper
has been limited to a survey of the work of the several states
in the gathering of statistics primarily for educational or in-
formative purposes, as distinguished from data reflecting
chiefly the administrative activities of state boards and de-
partments which are primarily executive or law-enforcing
bodies. That is to say, it will be confined to the activities
of the states in gathering industrial statistics, and popula-
tion statistics as reflected in censuses, with a brief statement
relative to the development of statistics of municipal fi-
nances, in the collection and compilation of which there has
.been considerable activity in recent years.
Industrial Statistics
The first bureau or department of a state government hav-
ing exclusively statistical functions to be established in the
United States was the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of
Labor, created by statute in 1869, the duties of which were
"to collect, assort, systematize, and present . . . sta-
tistical details relating to all departments of labor, . . ."
and though statistical bureaus had existed in other countries,
the Massachusetts bureau has always enjoyed the distinction
of having been the first governmental agency in the world
established for the gathering and compilation of statistical
data relating primarily to the welfare of the wage-earning
classes of the population. While continuing to cover this
particular field far more comprehensively than during its
earlier years, it long since outgrew its original somewhat
Umited jurisdiction and now includes within the scope of its
U. S. STATE STATISTICS eQS"^
functions the gathering of data not only with respect to the:
wages, hours of labor and working conditions of the wage-
earners, but statistics of manufactures (such as the amount
of capital invested in industry, number of wage-earners em-
ployed and yearly earnings, and value of stock, material,
and product), statistics of municipal finances, and a com-
prehensive volume of social data obtained by taking decen-
nially, midway between the federal censuses, a census of
population as complete and comprehensive, so far as it relates
to Massachusetts, as that taken by the national government
for all the states.
The Massachusetts bureau did not long remain the sole
occupant of the field marked out for it when it was estab-
lished. Pennsylvania followed three years later, in 1872 j
Connecticut established a similar bureau in 1873, but shortly
after repealed the law, though the bureau was subse-
quently re-established. Ohio followed in 1877; and since
then nearly all the other states have created similar
bureaus or departments. The language of the law in each
case, including the federal statute creating in 1888 the branch
of federal service corresponding to what is now the United
States Department of Labor, followed closely the Massa-
chusetts law which brought this new function of government
into existence, so that in a very real historical sense the
Massachusetts bureau must be regarded as the pioneer
bureau of industrial statistics in America.
Most of these bureaus were not concerned during their
earlier years with jurisdiction over the enforcement of labor
laws, so-called; they had no administrative functions and
they devoted themselves almost exclusively to the compila-
tion of such data relating to industrial conditions as they
could procure with meager appropriations and an untrained
personnel. These handicaps to the production of results in
the way of worth-while statistical contributions unfortu-
nately, after the lapse of a generation, still hamper much of
the work of these bureaus, while many have in the meantime
had imposed upon them a vast and diversified mass of admin-
694 MEMORIAL VOLUME
istrative and executive functions which have a tendency to
overshadow and to relegate their purely statistical activities
to a position of secondary importance.
Owing to the fact that, in a considerable number of the
states, the same official body exercises both statistical
and administrative functions, the official title of such
body in these cases is, appropriately "Bureau of Labor,"
"Industrial Commission," or a similar title comprehending
a diversity of functions. In certain others, as in Massachu-
setts, the administrative functions are delegated to separate
and distinct "Bureaus," "Boards," or "Commissions," but
even in such cases it is found that a considerable fund of
statistical information of an industrial character, particu-
larly that pertaining to the administration of the labor laws,
is published independently of the output of the statistical
bureaus. Because of this wide variation in functions exer-
cised by the state bureaus, commissions, etc., and the inter-
mingling of statistical information with matter descriptive
of the administrative work of a large number of the bureaus,
it is exceedingly difficult to obtain a complete set of reports as
the basis of an exhaustive treatment of the subject under con-
sideration. It has, therefore, seemed expedient to base the
present study primarily upon a consideration of the char-
acter and scope of the various bureaus, etc., as expressed in
the organic acts establishing them, supplementing such in-
quiry with a careful examination of the statutory provisions
defining their duties, so far as such provisions prescribe or
indicate the classes of industrial statistics which they are in-
structed or authorized to publish. Further, by way of ob-
taining even more definite information on the subject, the
official reports recently issued, so far as available, have
been examined with a view to presenting illustrative ex-
amples of the nature and scope of the labor and industrial
statistics actually published in those states which have given
special attention to this branch of work.
For the purpose of showing the number of labor bureaus,
etc., in the several states which may be considered as prop-
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 695
erly within the scope of the present inquiry, and the diversity
of functions exercised by them, a tabular view has been
prepared and appears as an appendix to this paper.
While it is true that a large number of the organs of gov-
ernment included in this survey are chiefly administrative
in character, nearly all of them issue detailed reports from
time to time, some of which contain a considerable fund of
statistical information descriptive of their immediate admin-
istrative work and frequently present also the results of care-
ful investigations in the particular industrial fields over which
they have jurisdiction. When, therefore, it is borne in mind
that prior to the establishment of the Massachusetts Bureau
of Statistics of Labor in 1869 (now the Massachusetts Bureau
of Statistics), there was, in the United States, no state bureau
or other official body having as an important function the
compilation and publication of labor and industrial statistics
as such, the establishment, during a period of less than half
a century, of 172 state departments,* whose primary func-
tions pertain almost exclusively to the promotion of the in-
terest of wage-earners, is a remarkable phenomenon of our
industrial life and unmistakable evidence of the public
concern manifested in the industrial welfare of the people.
Classifying these 172 bureaus, according to their primary
functions, we find that they may be naturally grouped in six
principal classes which we shall discuss separately:
a. General Administration, Factory Inspection, and Statis-
tics.— ^Under this caption there are 67 distinct official bodies,
of which number 43 have a combination of functions, includ-
ing, in most instances, the statistical function, 16 are charged
primarily with duties of inspection, while 8 have as their pri-
mary function the compilation of statistics. The bureaus,
included in this group furnish the major part of the labor and
industrial statistics published by the several states, and
among those which may be mentioned as particularly pro-
ductive of such material are the New York Industrial Com-
*Not including public employment oflSces, most of which are administered by
departments (included in the table) charged also with other functions.
696 MEMORIAL VOLUME
mission (the administrative head of the Department of
Labor, comprising several important bureaus), the Massa-
chusetts Bureau of Statistics, the Ohio Industrial Commis-
sion, the Wisconsin Industrial Commission, the Illinois
Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Pennsylvania Department
of Labor and Industry, and the California Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
b. Workmen's Compensation. — Only within very recent
years has workmen's compensation been an object of state
administration, although the compulsory reporting of in-
dustrial accidents is no new feature, having been required
in several states for a long term of years. At the present
time 25 of the 48 states have commissions or boards
administering workmen's compensation acts, and in Hawaii
a special board is appointed by the governor for each county.
In 9 states and in Alaska, the usual courts have jurisdiction,
no special administrative boards having been appointed.
The statistical data published by these boards and commis-
sions consist principally of their decisions and awards, and
tabulations of accidents reported to them. In the leading
manufacturing states, particularly Massachusetts, New
York, Wisconsin, and California, these reports are quite
voluminous. Important contributions to this branch of
statistics in recent years are the reports of various special
commissions preliminary to the passage of acts in the several
states establishing a permanent board and a definite plan of
compensation for industrial injuries.
c. Minimum Wage Commissions. — Variously known as
minimum wage commissions, industrial welfare commissions,
etc., these commissions are of very recent establishment. In
the course of determining the "living wage" in any particu-
lar industry for the purpose of establishing minimum wages
in such industry, these commissions, in several instances, at
least, have collected considerable information with reference
to the wages and expenditures of employees in a number of
occupations selected by them for investigation. Much of
the information gathered, however, is used primarily as
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 697
evidence in determining minimum rates of wages, and it is
not published in any great detail.
d. AgncuUure. — In preparing the list of bureaus, the ques-
tion arose as to whether or not all state boards of agriculture
should be included, but after some deliberation it was de-
cided that for the purpose of the present inquiry only those
departments which have, so far as could be ascertained by
an examination of the statutory provisions defining their
work, as an explicit function, the collection and publication
of statistics with reference to the industry, should properly
be considered in this connection. The total number of ofl&ces
which appear to be engaged in work of this character was
found to be 2S.
e. Mines and Mining. — For the most part, the work of
the 29 bureaus, departments, etc., included in this group is
largely that of inspection. The official titles vary consider-
ably, e.g., "Inspector of Mines," "Bureau" or "Depart-
ment of Mines," "State Mining Board," and "Bureau of
Labor and Mining Statistics." In Michigan there is, in
addition to the office of Mine Inspector, a State Board of
Greological Survey, and in Pennsylvania, in addition to the
Department of Mines, a Commission on Safety and Effi-
ciency in Mining Operations. The statistical matter pub-
Ushed by these several offices is principally descriptive of the
mining resources of the respective states and of the operation
of the mines. While a great part of the information is more
or less technical in character, that which has reference to the
safety of operatives is of increasing interest to the general
public in connection with the recent establishment of work-
men's compensation commissions in a large number of states,
as discussed above.
f. Arbitration, Mediation, and Conciliation. — ^In 21 states
legislative provision is made for the arbitration of labor dis-
putes, and in 17 of these states a special board has been
created for this purpose, while in the other 4 states this func-
tion is performed by a department or commission having
other duties. As in the case of the minimum wage commis-
698 MEMORIAL VOLUME
sions, much of the evidence collected by the boards of arbi-
tration is not published, being used merely in determining
the awards or decisions in the various controversies con-
sidered by them. It is the practice, however, of several of
the boards to publish the text of the awards from time to
time, and these frequently are accompanied by statistical
data which have been collected in the course of investigations.
It should not be confidently assumed because of the exist-
ence of a statute providing for certain classes of industrial
statistics that any considerable attention has been given to
the collection and publication of such statistics. In some
instances there has been merely a perfunctory compliance
with the legal requirements, while in other instances where
there is no mandatory requirement little, if any, endeavor
has been made to either secure or publish the particular class
of data provided for in the law. Furthermore, the provisions
may be in such general language that all classes of indus-
trial statistics could be included and yet the range of statis-
tical work actually undertaken might be extremely limited.
In a number of states the classes of statistics which the
bureaus are directed to collect and publish are given in much
detail. As an example of such provisions, the act defining
the duties of the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics may be
cited:
The duties of the commissioner shall be to collect, systematize, and present in
biennial reports to the legislature, statistical details relating to all departments of
labor in the state, such as the hours and wages of labor, cost of living, amount of
labor required, estimated number of persons depending on daily labor for their
support, the estimated number of persons employed by the several industries
within the state, the operation of labor-saving machinery in its relation to handle
(sic) labor, etc. Said statistics may be classified as follows:
I^rst. In agriculture.
Second. In mining.
Third. In mechanical and manufacturing industries.
Fourth. In transportation.
Fifth. In clerical and all other skilled and unskilled labor not above men-
tioned.
Sixth. The amount of cash capital invested in lands, in building and machin-
ery, severally, and means of production and distribution generally.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS
Seventh. The number, age, sex and condition of persons employed; the
nature of their employment; the extent to which the apprenticeship sys-
tem prevails in the various skilled industries; the numbers of hours of
labor per day; the average length of time employed per annum, and the
net wages received in each of the industries and employments within the
state.
Eighth. The number and condition of the unemployed, their age, sex and
nationality, together with the cause of their idleness.
Ninth. The sanitary condition of lands, workshops, dwellings; the number
and size of rooms occupied by the workers, etc.; the cost of fuel, rent,
food, clothing and water in each locality of the state; abo the extent to
which labor-saving processes are employed to the displacement of hand
labor.
Tenth. The number and condition of the Chinese in the state; their social
and sanitary habits; number of married and single; the ntuiber employed
and the nature of their employment; the average wages per day at each
employment, and the gross amount yearly; the amount expended by them
in rent, food and clothing, and in what proportion such amounts are
expended for foreign and home productions respectively; to what extent
their labor comes in competition with the other industrial classes of the
state.
Eleventh. The number, condition and nature of employment of the inmates
of the state prison, county jails and reformatory institutions, and to
what extent their employment comes in competition with the labor of
mechanics, artisans and laborers outside of these institutions.
Twelfth. All such other information in relation to labor as the commissioner
may deem essential to further the objects sought to be attained by this
statute.
Thirteenth. A description of the different kinds of labor organizations in
existence in the state, and what they accomplish in favor of the class for
which they were organized.
It would be impracticable, even were it desirable, within
the limits of this study, to present an exhaustive review of
all of the official state reports. We have, however, sum-
marized the more recent publications of several of those
states which have given considerable attention to the collec-
tion of industrial statistics.
New York
The wide range of subjects covered by the reports pub-
lished by the various bureaus and divisions under the admin-
700 MEMORIAL VOLUME
istration of the New York Industrial Commission* is well
defined by the following descriptionf of the functions of the
several oflSces:
Bureau of Inspection, covering inspection of factories,
mercantile establishments, and other places where labor is
employed, as to fire prevention, fire hazards, safety of life
and limb, and sanitary conditions. This is subdivided into
divisions of factory inspection, mercantile inspection, home
work inspection, industrial hygiene, section of medical in-
spection, and supervising inspection districts.
Bureau of Statistics and Information, subdivided into
divisions of general labor statistics, industrial directory, in-
dustrial accidents and diseases, special investigations, and
printing and publication.
Bureau of State Employment, designed to bring employers
and unemployed together for mutual benefit. This bureau
has established public employment oflSces in several impor-
tant labor centers of the state.
Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration, designed to aflFord a
ready means of adjusting disputes regarding industrial rela-
tions.
Bureau of Workmen's Compensation, which administers the
Workmen's Compensation Law and the State Insurance
Fund.
Bureau of Industries and Immigration, which is clothed
with power to make full inquiry, examination and investiga-
tion iuto the condition, welfare, and industrial opportunities
of all aliens arriving and being within the state.
The commission also succeeded to the powers and duties of
the Industrial Board in formulating an industrial code as well
as framing rules and regulations for the conduct of employers
* "The Industrial Commission administeTS a consolidation and reorganization
of the State Labor Department, with its various bureaus and ramifications, the
Workmen's Compensation Commission and the administration of the State Fund,
and the New York State Employment Bureau." The Bulletin, New York State
Industrial Commission, Vol. 1, No. 1, Oct., 1915, p. 10.
t Based on descriptive matter appearing on page 10 of the BuUetin referred
to in preceding note.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 701
and employees which have full force and effect of laws, and to
the powers and duties of the abolished state fire marshal's
office, relating to the inspection of steam boilers and explo-
sive magazines.
To a large extent, in the case of certain of these bureaus,
the text of the reports is merely descriptive of the adminis-
trative work done by them, but nearly all contain more or
less statistical data, while the reports of the Bureau of Statis-
tics and Information contain, almost exclusively, in the form
of text and tables, the results of investigations of labor and
other industrial matters.
Of the reports issued under the direction of the commis-
sion, several are worthy of specific mention. These are the
"Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor," covering
the general administrative work of the various bureaus,
"Special Bulletins" on particular subjects (superseding the
former "Quarterly Bulletins") and "The Bulletin," issued
monthly as the official organ of the commission and contain-
ing current information concerning the work of the depart-
ment and the official acts of the commission.
In 1911 a special commission, known as the New York
State Factory Investigating Committee, was created, with
authority "to inquire into the conditions under which manu-
facturing is carried on in cities of the first and second class of
the state, to the end that remedial legislation might be en-
acted for the protection of the life and health of all factory
workers, and for the best interests of the public generally. "
"This commission was continued from year to year and while
it was not created as a permanent body, its reports are so
voluminous and interspersed with so much statistical mat-
ter that it appears proper to mention them in this connec-
tion. The Fourth Report, issued in 1915 in five volumes,
comprises 2,922 pages. Volumes II and III, comprising
principally statistical matter, contain the results of a general
wage investigation in which these topics received special con-
sideration: mercantile establishments, the shirt industry, the
paper box industry, the confectionery industry, the button
702 MEMORIAL VOLUME
industry, millinery trade, and certain public service com-
panies. The other volumes consist principally of text, a con-
siderable portion being devoted to reports of hearings on
various industrial problems considered by the commission,
of which minimum wages and cost of living were subjects of
extended inquiry.
Massachusetts
Unlike those states which have delegated to a single in-
dustrial commission functions pertaining to the administra-
tion of the labor laws and the publication of industrial statis-
tics, Massachusetts has not consolidated the several boards,
bureaus, and commissions under a single industrial commis-
sion. Although the subject has been agitated, the oppo-
nents of a general consolidation contend that responsibility
for the administration of so many functions of first impor-
tance, even though closely related, can be more efficiently
fixed by concentrating specific duties upon separate depart-
ments organized for the purpose, than by distributing it
among numerous bureaus or minor subdivisions of one great
department. In order to present an adequate review of the
industrial statistics published in this state, therefore, it is
necessary to consult the reports of at least seven distinct
boards and commissions, namely: The Bureau of Statistics,
the State Board of Labor and Industries, the Industrial Acci-
dent Board, the District Police, the Minimum Wage Com-
mission, the State Board of Conciliation and Arbitration,
and the Homestead Commission.
During the year 1915 the Bureau 0/ Statistics issued its
Forty sixth Annual Report on the Statistics of Labor (also
separately issued in nine parts as bulletins), four separate
quarterly reports on employment conditions in the state, and
its Twenty ninth Annual Report on the Statistics of Manu-
factures was in process of compilation. Other bulletins and
reports on other than industrial matters were also issued by
this bureau during the year.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 708
The recent reports of the State Board of Labor and Indus-
tries consist of an Annual Report, descriptive of the adminis-
trative work of the board with special reference to the en-
forcement of the labor laws, inspection work, industrial
hygiene, the licensing of home-workers engaged in the manu-
facture of wearing apparel in tenements or dwelling houses,
and a new branch of work added to the department, involv-
ing the study of industrial conditions and the promotion of
, the industrial development of the state. In connection with
this new work the board has issued a series of bulletins,
known as "Industrial Development Bulletins," three of the
four already issued having been devoted to a consideration
of foreign trade and conditions, and the fourth, entitled
"Licensed Workers in Industrial Home Work," consisted of
an analytic study of the licenses granted by the board to
persons engaged in the manufacture of wearing apparel in
tenement or dwelling houses. The board also issues, from
time to time, rules and regulations adopted by it with refer-
ence to industrial establishments. The" Manual of the Labor
Laws" enforced by tlie board is an annual publication.
In large measure, the publications of the Industrial Acci-
dent Board are descriptive of its administrative work or
recite the decisions of the board in cases arising under the
Workmen's Compensation Act. In its recent Annual Re-
ports the board has, however, included considerable statisti-
cal material showing the "accident experience" based on the
reports of accidents made to the board. In bulletins issued
from time to time reports of cases under the Workmen's
Compensation Act, determined, on appeal, by the Supreme
Judicial Court, are also published by the board.
To the extent that the District Police have jurisdiction in
the matter of inspection of buildings and boilers, this branch
of the work of that department is covered in its reports.
The Minimum Wage Commission, both directly and
through subordinate boards in individual industries, has
collected considerable data with reference to the cost of
living and wages in certain selected industries. Its reports,
704 MEMORIAL VOLUME
formerly issued annually but more recently in bulletin form,
relate principally to the wages of women in those particular
industries selected for investigation, and to the effect of the
minimum wage decrees of the board in those industries in
which the legal minimum wage has been established. The
more recent reports have reference to the wages of women in
brush factories, corset factories, candy factories, laundries,
retail stores, hosiery and knit goods factories, clothing fac-
tories, and paper box factories.
The Annual Report of the State Board of Conciliation and
Arbitration (its sole publication, aside from the occasional
printing separately of its "Awards" in special cases), re-
hearses in some detail the evidence presented and facts found
and decisions rendered in the arbitration of the more impor-
tant labor disturbances, presenting in text form the facts
regarding such controversies, but containing practically no
statistical matter in tabular form.
The Homestead Commission was created in 1911 for the
express purpose of reporting a bill or bills embodying a plan
and the method of carrying it out, whereby, with the assist-
ance of the commonwealth, homesteads or small houses and
plots of ground may be acquired by mechanics, factory
employees, laborers, and others in the suburbs of cities and
towns. This commission has, by later legislation, been
authorized "to continue from time to time its investigations
of defective housing, of the evils resulting therefrom, and of
the work being done to remedy the same in Massachusetts
and elsewhere; to make studies of the operation of building
and tenement house laws; to encourage the creation of local
planning boards, and to gather information relating to city
and town planning for the use of such boards; and to pro-
mote the formation of organizations intended to increase
the supply of wholesome homes for the people." The An-
nual Reports of this commission and special bulletins issued
by it relate to the subject of its investigations and to the
work accomplished in encouraging city and town planning
and contain a limited amount of statistical matter.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 70S
Ohio
The Industrial Commission of Ohio, created in 1913.
superseded the following: The Commissioner of Labor Sta-
tistics, Chief Inspector of Mines, Chief Inspector of Work-
shops and Factories, Chief Examiner of Steam Engineers,
Board of Boiler Rules, and the State Board of Arbitration
and Conciliation. In addition, the commission assumed the
duties of the State Liability Board of Awards, which formerly
administered the Workmen's Compensation Act. The
commission, as organized, is divided into the following depart-
ments: 1. Executive; 2. Department of Workmen's Com-
pensation— State Insurance; 3. Department of Inspection,
including divisions of (a) Workshops and Factories, (b)
Boiler Inspection, (c) Steam Engineers, (d) Mines; 4. De-
partment of Investigation and Statistics, including divisions
of (a) Investigation and Statistics, (b) Employment Offices,
(c) Mediation and Arbitration; and 5. Department of Film
Censorship.
The work of these several departments and divisions is in
a general way covered in the Annual Reports of the com-
mission, and special bulletins issued from time to time relate
to particular phases of the work undertaken by one or an-
other department. The Department of Investigation and
Statistics (which virtually succeeded the Bureau of Labor
Statistics) issues "Reports," largely statistical, at ir-
regular intervals. These reports are numbered consecutively.
Of the 17 numbers issued during the calendar year, 1915,
nine dealt with Industrial Accidents (eight with refer-
ence to specific counties). Of the other reports the sub-
jects were as follows: Statistics of Mines and Quarries,
Union Scale of Wages and Hours of Labor (two), Cost of
Living of Working Women, Work of the Free Labor Ex-
changes, Rates of Wages and Hours of Labor and Fluctua-
tions of Employment, Inspection of Workshops, Factories
and Public Buildings, and the Physical Examination of
Wage-earners. The Fortieth Annual Report of the Division
46
706 MEMORIAL VOLUME
of Mines, comprising over 400 pages, contains, in Parts 1
and 2, detailed reports of the Chief and Deputy Inspectors,
while Part 3 contains a Directory of Coal Mines, by Counties.
A compilation of the laws governing Factory and Building
Inspection and Compulsory Education was issued in Sep-
tember, 1915, by the Division of Workshops, Factories and
Public Buildings.
lUinois
In this state there are five bureaus or boards whose func-
tions pertain to the administration of the labor laws and the
publication of industrial statistics, namely: The Bureau of
Labor Statistics, the Department of Factory Inspection,
the Industrial Board (administering the Workmen's Com-
pensation Act), the State Mining Board, and the State
Board of Arbitration.
The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics, issued in 1915, was on the subject of "Child
Labor," the Board of Labor Commissioners having recom-
mended that this report "should be a report on child labor
between the ages of 14 and 16 years, with a view to obtaining
information regarding the advisability of enacting a 16-year
minimum age law." This bureau also issued in 1915 a
Supplement to the Seventeenth Annual Report on Indus-
trial Accidents in Illinois, containing statistical information,
in much detail, relative to accidents occurring dutring the
six-months' period ending December '31, 1913, also a Compi-
lation of the Laws of Illinois for the Protection of Labor,
1915, and the annual report relative to the state employment
offices and the supervision of private employment agencies.
The Twenty second Annual Report of the Chief State Fac-
tory Inspector for the year ending June 30, 1915, covered the
various branches of inspection work performed by the Depart-
ment of Factory Inspection, and contained considerable
statistical information, not only with reference to the inspec-
tions made, but also the results of several important investi-
gations, one of which was undertaken with a view to deter-
mine the opposition, if any, of the manufacturers of the
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 707
state to further restriction of child labor. In this report,
also, some space was devoted to a presentation of statistics
of occupational diseases.
In the Second Annual Report of the Industrial Board tabu-
lations based on accident reports made to the board are
presented, but aside from this, the publications of the board
in 1915 had reference merely to the administrative work of
the board and to its opinions in cases arising under the
Workmen's Compensation Act, the text of these opinions
appearing in a separate publication.
The "Annual Coal Report of Illinois" issued by the State
Mining Board consists almost wholly of statistical matter
relative to the number and output of coal mines, days of
operation, number of employees (by occupations), cost of
operation, and the number of accidents, fatal and non-fatal,
classified by causes and by occupations, conjugal relation,
ages, etc., of persons injured or killed.
The report of the State Board of Arbitration is devoted, for
the most part, to a review of its work in the arbitration of
controversies referred to it during the year.
Pennsylvania
The Department of Labor and Industry, created in 1913,
now comprises five bureaus as follows : Inspection, Statistics
and Information, Arbitration, Workmen's Compensation,
and Employment. An Industrial Board created within the
department performs the functions of investigation and
drawing up rules and regulations for the administration of
laws to be administered by the department. The reports of
the several bureaus are, therefore, not issued as separate re-
ports but conjointly either in the Annual Report of the Com-
missioner of Labor and Industry, who is the chief executor
of the department, or as part of the "Monthly Bulletin."
Of the Second Annual Report the first part issued in 1915
includes statistics of production, and information concerning
welfare and educational work in the various industries,
aliens, and conditions of employment, for the year ending
December 31, 1914. The First Annual Report, issued in two
708 MEMORIAL VOLUME
parts, contained in Part I statistics and information relative
to production, immigration, and unemployment; and in
Part n, statistical tabulations based on accidents reported
to the Bureau of Statistics and Information, together with
other matter, in part statistical, relative to inspections,
hygiene and engineering, and safety standards adopted by
the Industrial Board. Mention also should be made of two
special publications issued by the department as a necessary
basis for future effective work, namely, the Industrial Direct-
oryi containing a list of the industrial establishments in the
state, and an annotated compilation, by a lawyer of ability,
of the labor laws of the state, including therewith quotations
and abstracts of judicial decisions bearing on these laws.
The "Monthly Bulletin," consisting largely of text,
reviews the work of the several bureaus and divisions of the
department, and contains also articles on subjects bearing
more or less directly on the work of the department, par-
ticularly accidents, accident prevention, workmen's com-
pensation and related topics.
Mining in Pennsylvania is a very important industry,
and the Report of the Department of Mines is an im-
posing document, that for 1914 (the last at hand), com-
prising nearly 1,700 pages, published in two parts. Part
I covered in detail the operations in the 21 anthracite
districts, and Part II the operations in the 28 bituminous
districts, as returned by the inspectors, together with
a considerable amount of data for the state as a whole.
To a large extent the information is presented in statis-
tical tables, and relates to the production of the mines,
forms of transportation therein, kinds of explosives and
machinery used, and accidents classified by causes, and by
occupations, age, conjugal condition, etc., of persons injured
California
The departments in California whose reports pertain
principally to labor and industrial matters are the Bureau
of Statistics of Labor, the Industrial Accident Commission,
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 709
the Industrial Welfare Commission, and the State Board
of Arbitration and Conciliation.
In the Sixteenth Biennial Report for 1913-1914 (the last
issued) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the important
administrative work of the bureau in enforcing the labor
laws is reviewed in Part I, the records being summarized in
a series of statistical tables. Part II consists of a survey
(principally text) of labor, living, and other conditions in the
lumber industry in California and a similar study of the
Portland cement industry. Part III consists almost wholly
of statistical matter relative to union rates of wages and
hours of labor and number of employees and wages received
in the principal manufacturing industries in the state. Be-
ginning in 1909 the bureau has compiled, biennially, the
labor laws of the state, the last compilation being that issued
in 1915, and containing the labor laws in effect at the close
of the legislative session of that year.
A certain amount of statistical information relative to
accidents appears in the Annual Report of the Industrial
Accident Commission, but for the most part the publications
of this commission consist of reports of decisions in cases
heard by them and of other matter, largely text, bearing on
topics immediately related to its work.
As expressed in the law creating the Industrial Welfare
Commission, its first duty is to "ascertain the wages paid,
the hours and conditions of labor and employment in the
various occupations, trades and industries in which women
and minors are employed in the State of California, and to
make investigations into the comfort, health, safety and
welfare of such women and minors." The commission is,
therefore, in effect, a "Minimum Wage Commission," but
prior to the passage of a constitutional amendment in
1914, no administrative functions were delegated to it.
Consequently, its first report, published in 1915, was con-
fined to a review of its investigations prior to that year.
These investigations covered the following branches of indus-
try: (1) Mercantile establishments; (2) Laundries; (3)
710 MEMORIAL VOLUME
Manufacturing industries (candies, confectionery, paper
boxes, clothing, printing, publishing, tobacco, shoes, gloves,
furnishings, and food products); (4) Fruit canning; (5)
Telephone and telegraph service; and (6) Hotels and res-
taurants. An investigation into the cost of living, based on
a study of over 1,000 expenditure budgets furnished by
women adrift, was also made by the board, and the results
are published in this report.
Reports published by the Bureau of Mines and the Com-
mission of Immigration and Housing contain a limited
amount of statistical data, but as the matter therein may
hardly be considered as in the nature of industrial statistics,
the reports are not here reviewed.
Wisconsin
In 1911 several bureaus in Wisconsin, including the Bureau
of Labor and Industrial Statistics, were consolidated into a
body known as the Industrial Commission, this state being the
first of five states * to create a Commission coordinating so
closely the functions of oflSces which formerly were quite dis-
tinct. No provision is made by law for the creation of definite
bureaus or divisions under the general supervision of the com-
mission, but certain functions are specifically designated.!
The reports issued by the commission in 1915 consisted of
■a series of bulletins descriptive of its administrative work
and orders issued by it with reference to safety in certain
industries, and a report on old-age relief. The commission
also compiled and published the Wisconsin Blue Book, 1915,
containing, among other matter, statistical data with refer-
ence to the industries of Wisconsin and census statistics.
Although the reports issued by this commission during
the past year or two have not constituted any large addition
to the fund of statistical data issued by the several states, it
should be noted that the commission has, during this period,
* Wisconsin, 1911 and 1913; New York, 1913 and 191S; Ohio, 1913; Pennsyl-
vania, 1913; and Colorado, 1915.
t See note 30 to Table I.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 711
been engaged primarily in the work of organization and in
administering the wide range of duties recently placed upon
it. Now that it has been thoroughly organized for eflFective
work, we may hope for large contributions of a statistical
nature covering the various fields of investigation over which
it has jurisdiction.
State Censuses of Population
In his "A Century of Population Growth," published by
the United States Bureau of the Census in 1909, Mr. William
S. Rossiter gives a historical sketch of census procedure in
the Colonial and Continental periods, — ^that is, prior to the
union of the states under the Constitution in 1789, from
which the following is quoted as a pertinent introduction to
a statement covering the current provisions of the several
States at this time for the taking of censuses independently
of the Federal Decennial Census:
Enumerations of population, more or less accurate, were made in nearly all the
Northern colonies during the Colonial period, and several of the states took one or
more censuses during the Continental period. Nearly all of these enumerations
were more than a simple numbering of the people; in some instances, the inhabitants
were classified by race, sex, age, and marital condition. Most of the enumerations'
of the Colonial period were made at the instance of the British Board of Trade —
which at this period exercised many of the functions now vested in a colonial office
— ^in order to obtain information which would be of value in the administration of
ther affairs of the colonies. Thus, in a sense, the British Board of Trade was the
originator of census taking in America. These enumerations were made under the
immediate supervision of the colonial governors, by sheriffs, justices of the peace,
and other county or town officers. . . .
The Colonial period in North America had covered more than a century and a
half, and the policy of the board of trade in demanding exact returns of population
at frequent intervals during this period doubtless had great weight in educating the
people of the colonies to an appreciation of the value of accurate statistical informa-
tion. It is significant, at least, that the states which took censuses in the Con-
tinental period upon their own initiative, after having thrown off the yoke of Great
Britain, were those in which, as colonies, enumerations had been made by British
authority; while those states which made no such enumerations were in the main
those in which no colonial enumerations had been made. The Continental censuses
are of great interest, and, so far as accuracy and completeness are concerned, prob-
ably compare well with the first Federal census. Especially to be noted is the
Rhode Island census of 1774, in which the schedule of enumeration is almost iden-
tical with that of the Federal census of 1790.
712 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The necessity for a national census, comprehending all the states, became appar-
ent early in the Continental period. During the War of the Revolution, the Con-
tinental Congress had authorized and directed the issue of $3,000,000 in bills of
credit. It had also resolved that the credit of the Thirteen United Colonies should
be pledged for the redemption of these bills; that each colony should provide ways
and means to redeem its proportion in such manner as it should see fit; that the
proportion of each colony should be determined by the number of inhabi-
tants of all ages, including negroes and mulattoes; and that it should be recom-
mended to the colonial authorities to ascertain in the most confidential manner
their respective populations, and to send the returns, properly authenticated, to
Congress. Massachusetts and Rhode Island took a census upon this recommenda-
tion in 1776, but most of the colonies failed to comply. In November, 1781, a
resolution was introduced in Congress recommending to the several states that they
make an enumeration of their white inhabitants pursuant to the ninth article of the
Confederation. The resolution failed to pass and the article was inoperative.
Several of the states, however, made an enumeration about this time. . . ,
Thirty-eight censuses of various colonies were taken, within the area of the
original thirteen states, before the first enumeration was made in Great Britain.
Apparently the British Government desired more definite statistical information
regarding its colonies than it required concerning the British Isles.
New York and Rhode Island developed the greatest aptitude for census taking;
of the total of 38 enumerations made before the date of the first Federal census, 18,
or more than half, were made in these two colonies — 11 in the former and 7 in the
latter. The people of Massachusetts and Connecticut manifested considerable
opposition to census taking, seeing no advantage in it to themselves, and fearing
that in some way the information obtained would be used by the British authorities
to their disadvantage. The first census embracing all the inhabitants of Connec-
ticut was taken in 1756, and the first in Massachusetts not until 1764 — when the
general court, after continued demands from the governor, and fearing longer to
irritate British authority, ordered a general census. Pennsylvania and Delaware,
as well as the Southern colonies, present a marked contrast to New York; so far as
appears, the Federal census of 1790 was the first thorough enumeration ever made
within the borders of any of them, except Virginia.
The records of enumerations before 1790 are in many cases fragmentary; often
totals only are given, and in some instances the results of the same enumeration
are reported differently by different authorities. It must be remembered, however,
that correct enumeration of any community is at best a difficult task, and the results
of early censuses in every country have been inaccurate and disappointing. The
later censuses in the Colonial period and most of those of the Continental period,
were more accurate, and compare well with the first Federal census.
In addition to the census of the entire country taken
decennially by the federal government pursuant to the pro-
visions of the Constitution of the United States, more than
half (27) of the states provide in their respective constitu-
tions for taking a census of their own population. Of these
27 states, however, only 10 actually take the census thus
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 713
provided for, for although the provision is explicit and vir-
tually mandatory in 16 of the states, but 8 of this number
comply with it, while of the 11 other states whose consti-
tutions merely authorize a census to be taken under con-
ditions more or less definite, 2 only take advantage of the
provision.
The primary purpose of such an enumeration, wherever it
is stated, is invariably political; that is, it is made with the
immediate object in view of obtaining a basis for the division
of the state into districts for representation in the legislature,
being analogous in this respect to the Federal Decennial
Census, which is taken ostensibly to determine representation
in the lower branch of Congress. Certain of these states,
however, of which Massachusetts and Rhode Island are the
most conspicuous examples, supplement the limited, literal
requirements of their constitutions and utilize the opportu-
nity thus afforded to gather a considerable variety of statis-
tical data bearing upon the composition and economic con-
dition of the population, thereby making available, in view
of the fact that these enumerations occur midway between
the United States Decennial Censuses, population data for
such states each five years. Others of this group, of which
the great state of New York must unfortunately be cited as
the most prominent, appear to limit the scope of their
tabulated census data substantially to the requirements
essential to provide the desired basis for districting purposes.
A classification of the states based upon their attitude
with respect to the taking of censuses independently of the
federal government is shown in detail below, followed by the
textual provisions* of their respective constitutions requiring
or authorizing a census or enumeration of inhabitants and a
statement of the character of the information available as a
result of the most recent enumeration.
* The complete text of the provisions in state constitutions relating to a census is,
in some cases, somewhat elaborate, and being without other than local significance
as a basis for legislative districting, it has not been deemed of sufficient importance
to incorporate it in the text.
714
MEMORIAL VOLUME
Class A
Clash B
States whose Constitution Con-
States whose Constitutions Au-
Class C
tains a Mandatory Provision
thorise an Enumeration or
States having
no
Constitutional
for an Enumeration or Census
Census
Group I
Group II
Group I
Group II
Provision
Those which
Those which
Those which
Those which
for a
observe the
ignore the
take advan-
ignore the
State
provision and
provision in
tage of the
provision
Census
take a census
practice
provision
Florida
Colorado
New Jersey
Alabama
Arizona
Iowa
Minnesota
Rhode Island
Arkansas
California*
Kansas
Mississippi
Maine
Connecticut
Massachusetts
Montana
Maryland
Delaware
New York
Nebraska
Nevada
Georgia
North Dakota
Oregon
New Hamp-
Idaho
South Dakota
Utah
shire
Illinois
Wyoming
Washington
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Missouri
New Mexico
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Tennessee^
Texas
Vermont
Virginia
West Virginia
Wisconsin'
8
8
2
9
21
* The constitution of California formerly contained a provision for an enumera-
tion of the inhabitants in 1852 and 18S5 and "at the end of every ten years there-
after," which enumerations "together with the census that may be taken under the
direction of the Congress of the United States in the year 1850 and every subsequent
ten years, shall serve as a basis for representation in both houses of the legislature."
This provision has been superseded by that of Article IV, Section 6, of the present
constitution, which stipulates that "a census taken under the direction of the Con-
gress of the United States in 1880 and every ten years thereafter shall be the
basis of fixing and adjusting legislative districts." The constitution further pro-
vides (Art. XI, Sec. 8) that any city or county containing a population of more than
3,500 inhabitants as ascertained by the last preceding census taken under the au-
thority of the Congress of the United States "or of the legislature of California" may
frame a charter for its own government. The quoted phrase may be interpreted
as a recognition by the constitution of the right of the legislature to cause a census
of the state to be taken and from this point of view, it might be proper to include
the state in Class B of our classification; yet it may be that this provision intended
only to recognize the right of the legislature to provide for a special census of a
particular city or county.
' The Tennessee constitution provides for an " enumeration of the qualified voters
in 1871" and "within every subsequent year of 10 years"; but this is not a census
of population, nor, indeed, has even this limited enumeration of qualified voters
been taken decennially as required.
' Wisconsin formerly took a state census under a constitutional provision which
was repealed in 1909, the last state census having been taken in 1905.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 715
The constitutional provisions of those states which take a
census of the population independently of the United States
Census and the classes of statistical data compiled therefrom
are as follows:
Florida
"The legislature shall provide for an enumeration of all
the inhabitants of the state by counties for the year 1895
and every 10 years thereafter." (Article VII, Section 50
The results of the Census of 1915 taken under this pro-
vision are published in a pamphlet of 78 pages, which gives
the population arranged by counties and minor civil divi-
sions, classified by race (white and negro), the number of
males and females of voting age being separately shown by
race. There are also tables showing for the several counties:
Whites and negroes, by sex, over and under 21 years of age,
respectively; whites and negroes, by sex, classified into age
groups (under 6 years, 6 to 10 years, 10 to 18 years, 18 to 21
years); whites and negroes, by sex, showing the number
who can and cannot, respectively, read and write; whites
and negroes, by sex, classified by native and foreign born;
whites and negroes, classified by sex, "who are deaf, dumb
and blind, or both, and who are not in any institution for
treatment, but who are under guardianship in private
homes"; persons 100 years old and over, by race and sex;
and there are various tables making comparisons with the
population of previous censuses. There is no attempt to
sub-classify the foreign born according to country of birth
and no parent nativity tables, nor data relating to conjugal
condition. The census is taken by the Commissioner of
Agriculture, the canvass being made by enumerators ap-
pointed by him.
Iowa
"The general assembly shall in the years 1859, 1863, 1865,
1867, 1869, and 1875, and every ten years thereafter, cause
an enumeration to be made of all the inhabitants of the
state." (Article III, Section 33.)
716 MEMORIAL VOLUME
The Census of 1915 included an enumeration of the popula-
tion under this provision and also an agricultural census as
provided for by the enabling act, and the results are pub-
lished in one comprehensive volume of 777 pages. Of these,
417 are devoted to a single table giving for each county, by
townships, towns, cities, and city wards, the population by
native born of native parents, native born of foreign or mixed
parentage, and foreign born, and the total persons of all
nativities, each of these nativity groups being classified by
age groups (under 5 years, 5 and under 10 years, 10 and under
18 years, 18 and under 21 years, 21 and under 45 years, 45
years and over). There are also tables showing, by counties,
classifications of the population by: Color; native and for-
eign born by sex according to the state or country of birth;
foreign born according to years in the United States (the
groups being: Less than 5 years in the United States, 5 years
and less than 10, 10 years and less than 20, 20 years and
more, number of years unknown) ; conjugal condition, show-
ing the number of persons single, married, widowed, or
divorced, by sex and age groups (18 to 21 years, 21 to 45
years, 45 years and over) ; school attendance by age groups
(5 and under 10 years of age, 10 and under 18), by period of
attendance in the year (less than 4 months, 4 months and
less than 6, 9 months and over), and also showing the kind
of school attendance (common, private, high, college) ; num-
ber of literates and illiterates by sex and age groups (10 and
under 21 years, 21 and under 45 years, 45 years and over);
occupations (gainful) of persons 14 years of age or over by
sex and age groups (14 and under 18 years, 18 and under 21
years, 21 and under 45 years, 45 years and over), the occupa-
tional classification being by six broad groups, namely,
agricultiu-al, professional, domestic and personal service,
trade and transportation, manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits, and laborers unclassified. There are also tables
showing the number of homes owned, the number of Civil
War veterans, and various tables making comparisons with
the population at preceding censuses. The agricultxu-al data
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 717
relate to the number of persons operating farms, number
and value of crops, live stock, poultry, and dairy products;
and under a provision of the census which authorized the
compilation of statistics " in reference to banking, railroads,
insurance, manufactures, education, and other matters of
public interest," a variety of data, including records of
temperature and snow fall and church affliations, is pre-
sented which does not commonly fall within the scope of a
census. The census is taken under the immediate juris-
diction of the Executive Council, the enumeration being by
the local assessors.
Kansas
"It shall be the duty of the first legislature to make an
apportionment, based upon the census ordered by the last
legislative assembly of the territory; and a new apportion-
ment shall be made in the year 1866, and every five years
thereafter, based upon the census of the preceding year."
(Article 10, Section 2).
The results of the Census of 1915 appear in a quarterly
publication of the State Board of Agriculture, under whose
direction the enumeration was made by the local assessors, —
a pamphlet of 82 pages. It gives the population by counties,
classified by sex, native and foreign born by sex; race or
color by sex; by state and country of birth without distinc-
tion of sex; and also the states and countries from which the
population of external birth emigrated to Kansas; number
of families and average number in each family; persons of
school age, the natiural militia, and population of voting age,
by sex; occupations of persons, without distinction as to sex,
over 21 years of age, by groups (agriculture, professional
and personal service, trade and transportation, manufactur-
ing and mechanical industries, mining); ages for the state
as a whole (each year specified, under 1 to 80 and over), by
sex. In addition to these several tabulations, which, except
the last mentioned, are for counties only, there are special
compilations for specified citiejs of 1,000 or more, and the
718 MEMORIAL VOLUME
aggregate population without distinction as to sex is given
for each minor civil division.
Massachusetts
"A census of the legal voters of each city and town, on the
first day of May, shall be taken and returned into the ofl5ce
of the secretary of the commonwealth, on or before the last
day of Jime, in the year one thousand eight hundred and
fift^-sevBEt; and a census of the inhabitants of each city and
town, in the year one thousand^gkiih3JUiLdEed.and sixty-five
and of every tenth year thereafter. In the census aforesaid,
a special enumeration shall be made of the legal voters; and
in each city, said enumeration shall specify the number of
such legal voters aforesaid, residing in each ward of such
city. The enumeration aforesaid shall determine the ap-
portionment of representatives for the periods between the
taking of the census." (Article XXI, Amendments.) Art-
icle XXII of the Amendments makes a similar provision for
an enumeration to be used as a basis for determining the
apportionment of senators, but there is only one enumeration
for both purposes.
The Massachusetts State Censuses have always been
taken, and the results published, in considerable detail, being
more complete in some respects than the federal censuses,
and formerly included, besides population, the subjects of
agriculture, manufactiu-es, fisheries and commerce. The
gathering of most complete manufacturing statis1;ics is now
an annual undertaking in this state, and in the enabling act
for the 1915 Census, no provision was made for an agri-
cultural census. The 1915 Census, therefore, relates to
population and fisheries and commerce only. The former
takes accoimt of the composition of the population classified
by state and country of birth for each sex; parent nativity
by color or race and distribution by country of birth for each
sex; literacy and illiteracy by color or race, and native and
foreign born by sex, the country of birth of foreign whites
being shown; also by age periods (10 to 20 years, 21 years
tr. S. STATE STATISTICS 719
and over) ; ages by color or race (native white of native and
foreign or mixed parentage, foreign white, native and foreign
colored, all others) ; conjugal condition by color or race and
age periods for the native white of native parentage, native
white of foreign or mixed parentage, foreign white and
colored; political condition of males of voting age by color
or race, and foreign white by country of birth, showing for
the aliens, length of residence in the United States by periods
(under 1 year, 1 but under 6 years, 6 years and over^ un^
known), the number unqiim^ycii^: for voting- by length of
residence only, the native born illiterate, and native and
foreign born under guardianship; occupations of foreign
born illiterates by age periods; occupations by sex and age
periods (under 10 years, 10 to 13 years, 14 to 15 years, 16 to
17 years, 18 to 20 years, 21 to 44 years, 45 to 64 years, 65
years and over, unknown) ; occupations by color or race
and nativity (native and foreign white, colored, all other),
and occupations of the foreign born white by country of
birth, — a maximum of 432 specified occupations being tabu-
lated. The census is taken by the Director of the Bureau
of Statistics, who appoints enumerators especially for the
purpose.
New York
"An enumeration of the inhabitants of this state shall be
taken under the direction of the Secretary of State, during
the months of May and June, in the year 1905 and in the
same months every tenth year thereafter." (Article III,
Section 4.)
The results of the Census of 1915, published under the
terms of the legislative enabling act, are presented in a vol-
ume of 1,379 pages, which gives only a classification of the
population or "total inhabitants" by citizens and aliens,
arranged by counties, for each town, city, borough, ward, or
assembly district, and for the counties of Bronx, New York,
Kings and of Buffalo, Lackawanna, Tonawanda, and
Rochester by blocks, the latter being accompanied by maps.
The document does not purport to be more than a formal
720 MEMORIAL VOLUME
report of the enumeration made for the purpose of the legisla-
ture in laying out legislative districts, and contains no sta-
tistical matter bearing upon the composition of the popu-
lation, not even a diflEerentiation by sex, other than the
division between citizens and aliens.
North Dakota
". . . The Legislative assembly shall, in the year
1895 and every tenth year, cause an enumeration to be made
of all the inhabitants of this state. . . ." (Article 2,
Section 35.)
The Census of 1915 was taken by the Secretary of State,
the enumeration being made by the local assessors on sched-
ules which provided for obtaining information showing the
number of native and colored males and females, and the
number of "foreign" males and females but without distinc-
tion as to country of birth; also the number of children of
each sex 5 years old and under, the number of persons of
each sex in the age groups 5 to 20 years, 20 to 60, and over
60. The resTilts as published consist only of a small, single
sheet, giving merely the population figures arranged by
counties, cities, and towns.
South Dakota
"The legislature shall provide by law for the enumeration
of the inhabitants of the state in the year 1895 and every ten
years thereafter." (Article III, Section 5.)
The returns of the census taken in 1915 are published
in a volume of 1,168 pages, of which 151 are devoted to
population and the remainder to agriculture, the census law
providing for the gathering of a comprehensive variety of
information relating to agriculture in conjunction with the
constitutional enumeration of the people. The population
data as presented include tables showing, by counties, the
number of white children under 6 years of age and ages 6 to
20, inclusive, classified by sex; the whole number of voters and
persons of military age, classified by native and foreign; the
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 721
number of "foreigners" (by which is apparently meant
foreign born) classified by country of birth; a classification
of the population according to "ancestry" by countries;
years of residence of foreign born in the United States and
in South Dakota by period groups (those resident in the
United States under 5 years, 5 to 10 years, 11 to 20 years,
over 20 years, unknown); colored (negro and other) by sex;
defectives (blind, deaf, insane, idiots) without distinction of
sex; whites above nine years of age who can read and write,
classified as literate and illiterate; "extent of education,"
i.e., the number of persons over 18 years of age, classified
according as they were returned as having been educated in
the common schools, high schools, normal schools, and col-
leges; number of home owners; conjugal condition by sex;
church affiliation; number over 10 years of age engaged in
occupations (75 classes) by sex. The census is taken under
the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the State Historical
Society, who devises the schedules and transmits them to
the county auditors, the actual enumeration being appar-
ently made under the supervision of these officers by the
local assessors.
Wyoming
"The legislature shall provide by law for an enumeration
of the inhabitants of the state, in the year 1895, and every
tenth year thereafter. . . ." (ArticleNo. Ill, Section 2.)
The published report of the Census of 1915 is a pamphlet
of 20 pages, showing the population by counties, classified
by race and sex; by age groups (less than 10 years, between
10 and 20 years, between 20 and 40 years, between 40 and 60
years, over 60 years) ; and single and married males, single
females over 21 years of age, married females, "natural
born" citizens, bom in Wyoming, foreign born; occupa-
tions (six classes); number of persons 10 years of age who
cannot read and write; number of home owners. Figures
showing crop acreage and comparisons with previous census
are also given. The census was taken by the Secretary of
State, the enumeration being made by the assessors.
47
722 MEMORIAL VOLUME
New Jersey
"The population of the townships in the several counties
of the state and of the several wards shall be ascertained by
the last preceding census of the United States, until the legis-
lature shall provide, by law, some other mode of ascertaining it."
(Article VI, Section VII, Paragraph 2.)
An abstract of the returns for the 1915 Census is embraced
in a pamphlet of 98 pages presenting by counties, cities,
towns, boroughs, and townships, classifications by color
(white and black) and sex; age periods (under 5, 5 to 18, 18
to 21, and 21 to 45) by sex; conjugal relation (single, mar-
ried, widowed, and divorced), the term "relation" having a
distinctive and limited meaning of its own, evidently and
unfortunately not synonymous with "condition" as used in
the United States and other state censuses, since, while the
number of single persons is given by sex, there is no differ-
entiation by sex of the married, widowed, or divorced, so
that although the conjugal relation of these groups is shown,
we are not informed as to the conjugal condition of any
portion of the male and female population separately, except
the unmarried; nationality (American (sic) born, English,
Irish, German, Italian, all others), the number of naturalized
persons being separately given; occupations (professions,
commercial pin-suits, skilled laborers, unskilled laborers,
farmers, all others) ; degree of literacy (can read, can write,
can speak English); school attendance (children attending
school, not attending school, attending public school, attend-
ing parochial school, attending private school) ; also number
of dwellings and number of families. The census is taken
under the general direction of the Secretary of State, who
appoints the enumerators and also district supervisors to
whom the enumerators make the retiurns, which are tabu-
lated by the supervisors for their respective districts.
Rhode Island
". . . the general assembly may, after any new cen-
sus taken by the authority of the United States or of this
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 788
state, reappo^-tion the representation in the house of repre-
sentatives by altering the ratio." (Article 5, Section 7.)
The returns of the census of this state are published with
great fullness of detail and for the Census of 1905 occupied
over 1,200 pages. They include tabulations showing the
state or country of birth of native and foreign born by sex
for the state, counties, cities and towns; ages (months under
1 year and years to 106) for the state, counties, cities, towns,
and wards, by sex and native and foreign, also foreign born
for the state, counties, cities, towns, and wards by sex and
country of birth by age groups (under 1, 1 to 4, 5 to 9, 10 to
14, 15 to 19, 20 to 29, 30 to 39, 40 to 49, 50 to 59, 60 to 69,
80 and over); families of specified size (1 to 17 and over)
occupying specified number of rooms (1 to 16 and over) for
the state, cities, towns, and wards; proprietorship of homes
(showing number owned, hired, and unknown) for the state,
counties, cities, towns, and wards; population by dependent
(under 15 years), productive (15 to 59 years, inclusive), and
aged (60 years and over) for the state, counties, cities, towns,
and wards; political condition of male population (legal
voters, non-voters, aliens) for the state, counties, cities, and
towns, by country of birth of father and by native white and
colored parentage, also foreign born male adults by a similar
classification; illiterate males 21 years and over by country
of birth, showing the number owning real estate, personal
property, etc., for the state, counties, cities, and towns; con-
jugal condition for the state, counties, cities, and towns by
sex, by age periods (under 15 years, 15 to 19 years, 20 to 24
years, 25 to 29 years, 30 to 34 years, 35 to 39 years, 40 to 44
years, 45 to 49 years, 50 to 59 years, 60 to 69 years, 70 to 79
years, 80 years and over), also by native and foreign born;
native and foreign born married females 15 to 45 years of age,
by ages, for the state by number of children, also showing
number of children bom and living, place of birth, occupa-
tions (by groups), number of literates and illiterates; number
of Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, all others; number
of white and colored; also the number of mothers of one
724 MEMORIAL VOLUME
child, two children, etc., up to 16 and over, by native and
foreign born, classified by ages, 15 to 45, for the state, cities,
towns, and wards; color and race by sex and native and
foreign born, and age periods for the state, counties, cities,
and towns; population by school, military, and voting ages
for the state, counties, cities, towns and wards; soldiers and
sailors by conjugal condition and branch of service for the
state, counties, cities, towns, and wards; foreign born sol-
diers and sailors by conjugal condition, branch of service,
number of pensioners, and political condition for the state,
counties, cities, towns, and wards; parent nativity of native
and foreign born by place of birth of fathers and mothers of
native born for the state; general parent nativity by native
and foreign born showing for the state, counties, cities, and
towns the number with both parents native, father native
and mother foreign, father foreign and mother native, both
parents foreign; occupations (179 specified) for the state by
sex and birthplace of father (United States and 10 specified
foreign countries), also a summary for all counties, cities,
and towns by groups (agriculture, domestic and personal
service, government, manufacturing and mechanical, pro-
fessional, trade and transportation, not specified) by sex;
also for all cities and towns by sex and birthplace of father
for all over 13 years of age; illiterates for the state, counties^
cities, and towns, by sex, for the population 10 years of age
and over by native and foreign; degree of illiteracy (showing
the number who can read but cannot write and those who
can neither read nor write) for the state, counties, cities,
towns, and wards by age periods (10 to 14, 15 to 19, 20 to 29,
30 to 39, 40 to 49, 50 and over) by native and foreign; also
for the state and counties by place of birth of the father and
the total of native white, native colored, and foreign fathers,
respectively. The census is in general charge of a "Census
Board," composed of the Governor, Secretary of State, and
the Commissioner of Industrial Statistics, who is designated
as Superintendent of the Census, the enumeration being
made by agents appointed by the board.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 725
The constitutional provisions for a census in the eight
states comprising Group II of Class A of our classification,
ante, appear to be quite as mandatory as those of the states
comprising Group I of this class, although their legislatures
ignored at the last census period, and some of them have
never complied with, these requirements.
In nine other states (Class B, Group II) the constitution
either directly authorizes, or implies authority on the part
of the legislature to provide for, a census, though in none of
them has this power ever been utilized.
Statistics of Municipal Finances
The relation of the state, in our American system of
government, to municipal functions has given rise to various
forms of supervision and quasi-jurisdiction by certain states
of the Union over the adniinistration of municipal finances;
and the necessity for exact information, compiled so as to
reflect the thoroughness with which taxes are assessed, the
completeness with which revenue is collected, and the extent
to which adequate service is rendered for expenditures, has
opened up during the past 15 years an important field of
statistical activity hitherto quite undeveloped in the United
States.
The value of comparable data bearing upon the financial
transactions and condition of municipalities was first recog-
nized by an act of Congress in 1899 which authorized the
annual collection of financial statistics of cities having a
population of 30,000 or over, and the same movement led
the legislature of the state of Ohio to pass an act in 1901
requiring the use of uniform methods of accounting and
uniform reports by the municipalities of that state and
creating a state office with power to enforce such uniformity
and the introduction of sound business methods. Since
then New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, California, Washington, Rhode Island, Oregon,
and some other states have enacted laws which provide for
the compilation and publication of uniform municipal re-
726 MEMORIAL VOLUME
ports, either with or without the establishment of uniform
accounts and the supervisory control established in Ohio.
In practically all of these instances, with the exception of
Massachusetts, the principal emphasis was placed at the
outset upon the development of proper auditing and ac-
counting systems with the statistical function as incidental
only, and the work, therefore, has usually been placed under
the control of the state fiscal oflScers or, as in Wisconsin,
with the Tax Commission. Local conditions in Massachu-
setts caused the movement to be inaugurated in that state
as a distinctly statistical undertaking, and to be entrusted
accordingly to the Bureau of Statistics, although by sub-
sequent enactments, authority has been given under certain
conditions to this department to audit municipal accounts
and to install accounting systems, accompanied further by a
limited jurisdiction over the issue of town debts; but the
statistical aspect of this branch of the activities of the Mass-
achusetts Bureau of Statistics has been steadily developed
so that in their scope and completeness of detail, and the
care with which they are compiled, the statistics of municipal
finances gathered and published by this bureau are un-
doubtedly now the most comprehensive of any issued in the
United States. For this reason and because they have been
used as a standard for begiimings in this field in other states>
a brief description of their development may properly find
a place in this survey.
The statute under which this work was first undertaken
in Massachusetts in 1906 provided merely for a return by
the accounting officer of the several cities and towns of the
commonwealth (354 in number), embodying detailed state^
ments of all receipts classified by sources and all expenditures
classified by objects for the preceding financial year, a state-
ment of the public debt showing the purpose for which each
item of the debt was created and the provision made for the
payment thereof, and also a statement of assets and liabil-
ities; and these returns were to be made upon uniform
schedules which were to be furnished the local officials by
U. S. STATE STATISTICS 727
the bureau. No penalty was provided for failure to make
returns, nor was any provision made for a preliminary
adoption of uniform classifications of accounting methods
as a prerequisite for the reporting of statistics on a uniform
basis.
To devise a schedule which would be at the same time
scientific in its conception and capable of securing classified
information upon a uniform basis from the existing hetero-
geneous "systems" of municipal bookkeeping, the character
of which was reflected in poorly arranged, non-informing,
and too often inaccurate auditors' and treasurers' reports,
was not a simple matter. In the intervening years, however,
most of the purely statistical difficulties which were en-
countered in the earlier stages of this work have been almost
entirely overcome, so that, notwithstanding the fact that
the municipalities of the state which have undertaken to
standardize their accoimting methods and terminology are
still in the minority, the bureau is now able to issue annually
a report embodying complete statistics of the financial trans-
actions,— receipts and expenditures being classified on func-
tional lines, — as well as complete statements of outstanding
indebtedness, for each of the 354 municipalities.
The states of Ohio and Iowa, through the State Auditor's
department, issue similar reports covering in general the
same class of data, but without as great analytical detail as
is the case in Massachusetts. In Indiana the report is
limited to a compilation, in summary form without detail
for the several civil divisions, of balances, receipts, debits,
and disbursements on account of the various funds and a
general statement of indebtedness, the function of the De-
partment of Inspection and Supervision of Public Offices,
having jurisdiction, being primarily administrative.
Evidence of the value of municipal financial statistics,
when systematically and carefully compiled, as a source of
information to administrative officers, to citizens interested
in an efficient management of the finances of their commu-
nities, and to students of municipal problems generally, is
728 MEMORIAL VOLUME
constantly increasing and indicates the possibilities which
their further development and their correlation with physical
data possess in the practical interpretation of the functions
of local government in terms of eflBciency and improved
administration. There can be no doubt, therefore, that our
American states are bound to cultivate this field with in-
creasing intensiveness in the future.
U. S. STATE STATISTICS
729
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733
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U. S. STATE STATISTICS
737
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INDEX
INDEX
Abbott, Dr. Samuel W., 32
Achenwall, alluded to, 431
Ackersdyck, Professor, director of Govern-
ment ConmiisBion on Stat^tics, Neth-
erlands, 434
Adams, Prof. Henry C, statistician to United
States Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion, 28, 605, 608, footnote 676
Agriculture, Industrial Institute of, Kome, 121
Agriculture, International Institute of, 36,
186, 197, 652
Agriculture, stat^tics of, international com-
parison, 388
Aguesseau, M. d', in charge of the direction
of Commerce, France, 268
Alaska, 677, 678, 696
American Statistical Association, census, con-
nection with, 7, 23
Census directors members of, S
Census (6th) investigation by, 673-674
Development of, 9
Early addresses, 5-6
Early leaders of, 10-13
Fellows, duties of, 4
Honorary members, 5, 9
Library, 5, 10
Organization, 3
Presidents of, 25
Vital Statistics, legislation for sought by, 6
Annenski, N., Nischni-Nowgorod Statistician,
Russia, 522, 524, 525
Ardascheff, Paul, quoted 253, footnotes 253,
257
Amould, M., "La Balance du Commerce,"
262, footnote 268, 270
Arnouville, Marchault d', 249-250
AroseniiM, Dr. Edvard, "History and Organ-
ization of Swedish Official Statistics,"
537-569
Astrenberg, Franz Hitter von, president of
Austrian Statistical Commission, 97
AUSTRALIA
Accidents, industrial publication, 64
Agriculture, statistics, 58, 65
Area of, 55
Australasia, colonies in, 65-56
Banking statistics, 58, 65
Birth statistics, 58, 62
Blue Book, statistical publication, 56-57
Census and Statistics Act, 1905, 59-60,
63,64
Bureau of, 60
CensuSt Conmionwealth, 1911, 64
AUSTRALIA— Continued
Colonial office, (see Blue Book)
Commerce, statistics of, 56, 58, 62
Commonwealth Bureau of Statistics, rela-
tion to existing state bureaus, 61-62
Commonwealth of, federated, 1901, 55
Death statistics, 58, 62
Education, statistics of, 56, 58
Educational courses given in Sydney and
Melbourne on commerce and eco-
nomics, 64
Employment, publication, 64
Federal Capital Territory, area, 56, table
Finances, colonial, 56
Finance statistics, 58
Fisheries, statistics of, 65
Forestiy, statistics of, 65
Immigration, publication, 64
Industrial conditions, publication, 63-64
Insurance statistics, 65
Judicial statistics, 56, 58
Labor Bulletin, Australia quarterly pub-
lication. List of subjects, 63-64
Labor statistics, 65
Land settlement, statistics of, 58
Legislation bearing on statistics
Census and Statistics Act, 1905, 59-60,
63,64
Manufactories, statistics of, 58, 59
Manufactures, statistics of, 65
Marriage statistics, 58, 62
Melbourne, conference at, 1906, 61
Meteorology, statistics of, 58
Mining statistics, 58, 65
Miscellaneous statistics, 58
New South Wtdes
Area and discovery, 65, 56, table
"Statistical Account of Australia and
New Zealand," 59, 63
Statistical office, 57
New Zealand, area and settlement, 55, 56,
table
Northern Territory, area, 56, table
Population statistics, 56, 58, 65
Post, statistics of, 58
Prices, publication, 63
Publications, statistical
Accidents (see Lahor BuUetin)
Blue Book, 56, 57
Colonies, 58-59
Commerce, 62
Employment (see Labor Bitlletin)
Immigration (see Labor BuUetin)
Industry (see Labor Bulletin)
744
MEMORIAL VOLUME
AUSTRALIA— Continued
Publications — Continued
Labor Bulletin, 63-64
New South Wales Bureau, 59, 63
Official list, appendix, 69-81
Prices (see Labor Bulletin)
Wages (see Labor Bulletin)
Vital statistics, 62
Year Books, 59, 63
Queensland, area and discovery, 55, 56,
table
Railways, statistics of, 58
South Australia, area, 56, table
Statistical Account of Aiistralia and New
Zealand," issued by New South Wales
Bureau, 59, 63
Statistical bureaus, Australia, recruited
principally from raw material, 64-65
Statistical information furnished by Blue
Books, 56-57
Statistical office. New South Wales, 57
Statistical Register, developed from Blue
Book, 57
Statistics, centralization needed, 66
Commonwealth Bureau of, relation to
state bureaus, 61, 62
Compiled by bureaus, 58
Compiled by bureaus from data of other
departments, 58
Compiled by other departments, and
adapted for publication by bureaus, 58
Defects of organization, 65-67
Education of officials insufficient, 68
Future of, 65-69
Present organization of, 65, 66, 68
Tasmania, area, 56, table
Trade statistics, 58, 65
Telegraphs and telephones, statistics of, 58
Unemployment, publication, 63
Van Diemen's Land, area of, 55
Victoria
Area of, 56, table
First state of Australia to appoint "Gov-
ernment Statist," 1873, 57
" Victorian Year Book," 59
Vital statistics, 61, 62-63, 65
Wage statistics publication, 63, 64, 65
Western Australia, area of, 56 table
AUSTRIA
Accident insurance, statistics of, 106, 110
Agrarian statistics, 93
Agriculture, Board of, 104, 105, 106
Statistics of, 93, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106
Associations, statistics of, reports, 99-100
Auditing Boanl of Control, incorporated
with Bureau of Statistics in 1829, 87
Aussig, 116
Banks (see Post Office Savings)
Bohemia, 114
Brann, 116
AUSTRIA — Continued
Bukowina, 114
Census department, 93
Census
Home Department publication, 88
Staff, 96
System, 86, 88, 94
Central Departments, statistical offices of,
101
Central Statistical Commission, business
management, 91
Committees, 92, 93
Creation of, 89
Departments of, 93-94
Development of, 94-101
Expenditures of, 96
General assembly, procedure of, 92
Influence, 117-118.
Meetings, 90
Members, 90, 93
Need for centralization in, 112
Officers, 91-92.
Relations with central departments of
government, 90
Staff, 96
Commerce and Industry, chambers of, 105
Commerce,
International, 100
Statistics of, 101, 102, 103
Communal statistics, 113, 115-116
Conscript system, 86
Cracow, 116
Dairy products (see Milk Trade)
Dams in mountain streams, statistics of,
reports, 106
Debt statistics, reports, 111
Defective classes included in census, 1880, 95
Directorate General of accounts, 87, 88
Dwellings, statistics of, 86, 95, 99, 110
Education, industrial, reports. 111
Educational statistics, 94, 97
Electoral statistics, 100
Finance, Municipal reports, 118
Statistics of, 94, 108, 109-110, 111
Foreign statistics, 101
Forestry statistics, 105, 106
Galicia, 114
Harvests, statistics of, 98
Health insurance, statistics of, 98, 106, 107
Health statistics, 94, 110
Hollerith System, footnote 25
Home Department, relations with census
and publications, 88, 94-95, 106-107,
111
Hungary, statistical relations with, 394,
397-398, 399 (see also publications
Austro-Hungarian)
Imports and exports, reports, 101
Industrial schools, statistics of. 111
Industrial statistics, 99, 101, 105, 114
INDEX
745
AUSTRIA— Co«(tnu«J
Industry, Chambers of Commerce and, 105
Institutions for care of young people and
children, census of, 100
Insurance statistics (see Accident, health,
mine, penaione)
"Intelligence of Department of Statistics,"
publication, 89
International statistics in Austria, 93, 100,
120
Judaism, statistics of, reports, 98
Judicial statistics, 94
Labor statistics, 103, 104, 110
Legal statistics, reports, 101
Legislation bearing on statistics
1753, 1754, 1762, 1770, 1777, 85
1804, 1817, 86
1819, 87
1840, 1857, 88
1860, 1861, 1863, 89
1869, 94
1870, 90-91
1896, 109
Lemberg, 116
Live stock (see Statietical Survey)
Lower Austria, 115
Manual of statistics, daily publication, 89
Military statistics, 111-112
Milk trade, statistics of, 106
Mine insurance, statistics of, 107
Mines, statistics of, 105, 111
Moravia, 115
Mortgages, reports, 98
Municipal statisticians, conference of, 117
Municipal statistics (see Communal)
Navigation statistics, reports, 103
Olmlitz, 116
Organizations, statistics of, 93, 97, 100
Patents (see Legialalion)
Peat-bogs, statistics of, 106
Pensions, statistics of, 107
Population
Early attempts to ascertain, 85
Statistics of change of, office, 93
Statistics of, 99, 100
See also Rescripts and Statistical Survey
Post Office savings banks, statistics of, 105
Prague, 115
Prices statistics reports, 104
Provincial statistics, extension of, 117
Provincial statistics (see Statistical offices of
states)
Publications, statistical
Agriculture, 99, 105, 106
Associations, 99-100
Austrian statistics, 99, 101
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, official
manual, 97-98
"Census books," earliest, 85
Census, 1857. 88; 1869, 96; 1900, 96-97;
1910, 97
AUSTRIA — Continued
Publications — Continued
Commercial, 102, 103
Commerce, international, 100
Comparative statistical outlines for a
series of years, 103
' Communal statistics, 115-116, 117, 118
Dams in mountain streams, 106
Debt, 111
Education, 97
Education, industrial. 111
Employes (see Insurance)
Finance, 109-110, 111
Finance, municipal, 118
Forestry, 105, 106
Health statistics, 98, 107
Home Department organs, 88-89, 97,
99, 100, 101, 106, 107
Imports and Exports, 101
Industrial census, 99
Industries, 105
Institutions for care of young people and
children, register, 100
Insurance, 106, 107
Judaism statistics, 98
Labor statistics, 104
Legal statistics, 101
Live stock statistics, 88, 101
Military statistics, 111-112
Milk trade statistics, 106
Mines, statistics of, 105, 111
Monthly Journal, scientific periodical. 97
Mortgages, statistics of, 98
Municipal Lexicon. 96-97
Municipal finance. 118
Municipal (see also Communal)
Navigation statistics, 103
Peat-bogs, statistics of, 105-106
Post and telegraph, statistics of, 104-105
Prices, statistics of, 104
Private works, 86, 98, 100
Provincial statistics, 114-115, 118
Railroad statistics, 107-108
Salt, statistics of. 110
Self-governing bodies, 99
Special Register for Kingdoms and Prov-
inces, 96, 97
Statistical annual, succeeded Tables of
statistics, 94
Tables of statistics, annual report of de-
partments, 87, 94
Taxes, statistics of, 109-110
Telegraph, post and, statistics, 104-105
Telephones, statistics of. 105
Tenement houses, statistics of, 100
Tobacco, statistics of, 110
Topography, 96
Trade statistics, 101, 102, 103
Wages (see Labor)
Water Register, 111
746
MEMORIAL VOLUME
AUSTRIA — Contirmed
Railroad statistics, 107, 108
Reichenberg, 116
Religious statistics, 94
Besoripta, 1753, 1754, 1762, 85
Salt statistics, reports, 110
Self-governing bodies, statistics of, 99, 113
Silesia, 115
States, statistical ofSces in, 113-115
Statistical Annual (see PublicatioTis)
Statistical commission, central (see Cen-
tral)
Statistical department in Austria first sug-
gested, 86
Statistical office, creation, 1S40, 88
Positions in, 118
Statistical offices of central departments,
101
Statistical office of states (see States)
Statistical service of foreign countries, rela-
tions of central statistical commission
with, 120
Statistical service, regular administrative,
establishment of, 87
"Statistical Survey of Population and Live
Stock, According to the Census of Oc-
tober 31, 1857," 88
Statistical works, private (see Publicationa)
Statistics
Administration of, 119
Bureau of, incorporated with Auditing
Board of Control, 1829, 87
Development of, up to 1863, 85-89
Faults of decentralization of govern-
ment, 112
Future of, 121
Government measures toward con-
tinuous, 86
Origin, 1753, 85
Tables of annual report of government
departments, 87
Topographical office of, proposed estab-
lishment of, 1819, 87
Styria, 114
Taxation statistics, 108-109, 110
Telegraph statistics, 104
Telephone system, statistics of, 105
Tenement houses, reports, 100
Tetschen, 116
Tobacco statistics, reports, 110
Topographical statistics, office of, 93, 96
Trade
Board of, 89, 90, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,
107, 108, 109
Statistics of, 93, 94, 99, 101, 102, 103, 114
(see also Milk)
Treasury Board, 108, 109, 110, 118
THent, 116
Trieste, 116
Tyrol, 115
AJJSTmA— Continued
Unemployed, census of, 95
Vienna, 115
Vocational statistics, 95
Wages statistics (see Labor)
War office. Ill
Water Supply, Board of. Ill
Works, Department of Public, 100, 111
Avenel, M. d*, "Hiatoire Economique de la
PropriitS, des Denr&s, dcs Salaires, et
de tons les Prix en g6n6ral," 239, 241,
footnotes 239, 240, 241
B
Back, Abraham, combined occupation with
cause of death (Sweden), 545
Bailly, M., "Histoire FinanciSre de la France,"
footnote 248
Baines, Sir Athelstane, " History and Develop-
ment of Statistics in Great Britain and
Ireland," 365-389
"History and Development of Statistics in
British India," 417-426
Baldacci, Baron von, urged establishment of
statistical department in Austria, 86, 87
Ballois, M., founder of Society Statistique de
France, footnote 284, 292
Barbu, Henri le. Bishop of Nantes, Statutes
of, 242
Bareaud, M., French translation of Cibrario
by, footnote 240
Bateman, British " Annal Abstracts," 374
Baudrillart, M., quoted, 237
Baumhauer, Dr. von, statistical bureau of
Netherlands of 1848 under, 433, 434,
435
Beaujon, Dr. A., director of Statistical Insti-
tute, Netherlands, 436
Beaumont, Moreau de, editor MSmoirea 1768,
France, footnote 250
Beauvillier, duo de, program for Memoires of
1698 outlined by, 254
BELGIUM
Accidents, industrial, statistics of, 155, 156
Agriculture, 24, 125, 126, 136
Census of, 131, 132, 135
Almanacs, 126
Army, 125
Birth statistics, 127
Blind (see Judicial Statiatics)
Brussels, Bibliothdque Royale, footnote, 125
Census, 1828, 127
1846, 131
1856, 134
Child protection (see Judicial Statistics)
Commerce, 125, 126, 136
Census of, 149-151
Foreign, method of taking census of, 142-
144
Reports on, 131
INDEX
747
BELGUnS.— Continued
Criminality, statistics of (see Judicial
Statistics)
Death statistics, 127, 12S
Demographic statistics, publications, 137-
141
Economic statistics publications, 141-151
Finance, 125
Financial statistics neglected, 158
Hulthem, the van, library, footnote, 125
Industrial state of Belgium, 129
Industries, census of
1846, 131, 132, 133, 134
1880, 145-147
1896, 147-149
1910, 149-151
Statistics of, 24, 125, 126, 136
Insanity (see Judicial Statistics)
Instruction, public, reports on, 131
Interior, ministry of, 129
Judicial statistics, 151-153
Labor, Bureau of, created 1894, 136, 153
Conditions, reports on, 131
Statistics of, 153-156
Legislation bearing on statistics, 134
Committee on Statistics to publish ac-
coimt of condition of kingdom, 136
Labor, bureau of, 136
Laws for censuses, 134-137
Metallurgy (see Mining Statistics)
Reports on, 131
Mining, reports on, 131
Method of taking census of, 141-142
Ministries in charge of statistical branches,
159
Moral state of Belgium, publication on, 129
Netherlands, statistical relations with, 126-
127, 432-^33
Occupational statistics (see Industry and
Commerce)
Pauperism (see Judicial Statistics)
Political state of Belgium, publicationon, 129
Population, 125, 126, 128
Census of, 131, 133
Method of taking census of, 137-141
Registers of, 134, 135, 140
Reports on, 131
Prisons (see Judicial Statistics)
and workhouses, reports on, 131
Publications, statistical
1827, 126, 127
1830-1841, 128
1841-1900, 136
(See also appendix)
Ancient statistics, 125
Central Statistical Commission, 131
Demographic, 137-141
Economic, 141-151
Industrial, 129
Official, 1830-1912, appendix 166
SELGIVM— Continued
Publications — Continued
Physical, 129
Social, 151-156
Subject matter of principal, 137-156
Religious establishments, reports on, 131
Social statistics, publication, 151-156
Statistical biireau, general, 127
Researches, interest in, 125
Statistics
1799, France and Belgium, 125
1814, Holland and Belgium, 126
1830, Belgium independent, 127
Central Commission of, 129-130, 140
Commission of 1826, 126
Future of, 156-165
Organization period, 1799-1846, 125-133
Tariff, reports on, 131
Territory statistics, 126
Trade, 136
Trades, census of, 1896 (see Industry)
Transportation, 125, 136
Census of (see Industry)
Reports on, 131
Vagrancy (see Judicial Statistics)
Wages (see Labor Statistics)
Workhouses, prisons and, reports on, 131
Benzelius, Erik, Bishop of Link3ping, Sweden,
538
BeOthy, Leo, Hungarian statistician, 400
Berch, A., Swedish professor of political econ*
omy, 544
Berg, F. Th., first chief of Swedish Central
Statistical Bureau, 555
Bertin, M., Contrdleur g£n£ral, successor of
Colbert, 250
Bertillon, A,, Bureau Statistique de la Ville de
Paris under, 305, 437
Bertillon, Jacques, succeeded A. Bertillon, 305
Billings, Dr. John S., vital statistics. United
States, 33
Bingenheim, SchOnwald von, director of Aus-
trian statistical office, 98
Bjelawski, President of Russian Statistical
Council, 479
Block, Maurice, statistical expert of France,
19th century, footnote 217, 236
Blue, Dr. Archibald, director of 4th and Sth
census, Canada, 184, 191, 194
Bodin, Jean, "Six Livrea de la Rfipublique,"
228, 243, 253, footnote 244
Boeckh, R., director of Statistical State Office,
Berlin, 351
Boileau, Etienne, "Livre des Metiers," 230
Boislile, M. de, "Correspondence des Con-
trdleurs Generaux," 255, 273, footnotes
249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 258, 259
Bonaparte, Lucien, 125, 280, 284, 285, 286,
291, 292
Bond, Dr. Henry, 5
748
MEMORIAL VOLUME
Bonnardot, M., Introduction to "Livre des
Metiers,*' footnote 230
Bouchard, M., "Systdme Financier de 1'
Ancienne Monarchie," footnote 224
Boulainvillier, due de, K6Buin6 of Mimoirea,
250, 251
Boulainvilliers, Count de, "L'Etat de la
France," footnote 255, 256
Boulenger, Louis, author of a pretended
cadastre of France, 240
Boullongne, M. de, French contrdleur g6n6ral,
265
Bourgoyne, Mgr. le due de, alluded to, foot-
note 251
Bowring, John, 9
Brandeis Protocol, 40
Brissaud, M., "Histoire ggn^ale du Droit
Frangais public et privfi," footnotes
224, 252, 253
Bryce, James, "American Commonwealth," 21
Bticher, "Population of Frankfort a. M. in
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Cen-
turies," 333
Buday, Dr. Ladislaus von, "History and
Development of Official Statistics in
Hungary," 393^14
BufFon, Nicolle and, report by (France) , 265
Bunle, Henri, organized Bureau of Statistics,
Quebec, 193
Buschen, von, editor of Russian year books
appearing 1863, 496
BiiBching, first publication of German official
statistical material by, 333
Butler, Benj. J"., 5
Cambon, M, "Rapports," 282
CANADA
Acadia, census in, 180
Agricultural correspondents, crop reporting
service by, 186, 188
Agriculture
Census of, 1906, 1907, 1S5
Department of, relations to census office,
180, 183, 184, 186
Ministry (see Department of)
Statistics of. 185, table 190, 192-193. 197
Alberta, statistics in, 192
Banking statistics, 184, table 190
Birth statistics, 187
British Columbia, statistics in, 192
Building societies, statistics of, 184
Census and statistics office, 185, 186
Census
1666, 179
1667, 180
1871. 184
1881, 1891, 1901, under act of 1879. 184
In New France, 179, 180
Charities, statistics of, table 190
CANADA— Continued
Commerce, department of trade and, 186
Commerce, trade and, statistics, table 189
Commercial statistics, legislation concern-
ing, 185, 188
Communications, statistics of, table 190
Criminal statistics, 185, 188
Currency statistics, table 190
Customs statistics, table 189
Death statistics. 184, 187
Defence statistics, table 190
Education statistics, 185. 187. table 190
Finance, statistics of, table 189
Fisheries, statistics, table 190
Forestry, statistics of, table 189, 190
Hollerith System in Canada, footnote 25
Immigration, statistics of, table 189, 190
Indian affairs, statistics of, table 189
Insurance statistics, 184. table 190
Judicial statistics, table 190
Loan and trust companies, statistics of,
table 190
Labor, statistics of, table 189. 190
Legislation, bearing on statistics, 1847, ISO,
181-182
1868. 183
1870. 183-184
1876. 188
1879, 184
1905, 185. 187
Manitoba, statistics in, 192
Manufactures, census of, 1906, 185. 187-
188
Manufactures, statistics of, 185, table 190
Marine, statistics of, table 189
Marriage statistics, 187
Minerals, statistics of. table 190
Mines, statistics of, table 189
Municipal statistics, table 190
Naval service, statistics of, table 189
New Brunswick, statistics in, 192
New France, census in, 1666, 179. 180
Nova Scotia, statistics in, 192
Ontario, statistics in, 191
Population in Canada, first record of, 179
Population statistics, 185, table 190
Fort Royal, census in, 179
Prince Edward Island, 191, 192
Provinces (see Statiatica)
Publicatioiu, statistical
1665-66, 179
1851, 1860. 182
1861, 1865, 181
1871. 180. 184
1863-73, 184
1883-90, 184
Agriculture. 186, 192-193
Census, 185
Commerce, 188
Crops (see AgricuUure)
INDEX
749
CANADA — Continued
Publicationa — Contin-ued
Departments of Dominion sovernment
issues, table, 189
Educational, 187, 191-192
Manufactures, 188
Miscellaneous, 184
Provincial, 186-187, 192-193
Vital statistics, 187, 191-192
Year Book, 189, 193-194, 196
Quebec, statistics in, 179, 192, 193
Registration and Statistics, Bdard of, 1847,
180
Revenue, statistics of inland, table 190
Saskatchewan, statistics in, 192
Societies, friendly, statistics of, table 190
Statistical instruction, courses in, 198
Statistics, Board of Registration and, 1847,
180
Compiled and published by departments
of Dominion government, table 189, 190
Historical Survey of, 179-185
Future of, needs, recommendations and
reforms proposed, 195-198
Office, census and, 185-186
Official administration of, table 190
Present organization of, 185-195
Provinces and, 190-193
Stock companies, statistics of, table 190
Trade and Commerce, Department of, 186
Trade and Commerce Statistics, table 189
Trades, census of, 179
Trade statistics, table 190
Transportation, statistics of, table 189, 190
Vital statistics, 185, 187, table 190, 191-192,
197
Capen, N.,7
Capital and labor. Solution of impending
struggle foxmd in statistics, 40-41
Carleson, E., made first general summary in
Sweden, 1749, 542, 545, 547
Cass, Lewis, 5
Chambrol, Count de, Pr£fet de la Seine,
quoted, 290
Champneuf, de Guerry de, director of af-
faires criminelles, in French Ministry
of Justice, 293
Chapin, Dr. Charles V., service rendered to
vital statistics in the United States
by, 32
Chaptal, M., minister of Interior, France,
1800, 269-270, 280, 291. 292, 316,
footnote 269
Chickering, Dr., 7
Cheysson, M., Album de Stalistiaue graphique,
295
Cibrario, I'Eeanomie Politique du Moyen-Age,
footnote 240
Claus, Dr., German Imperial office, footnote
352
Clement, M., "Lettres, Instructions et
Mdmoires de Colbert," footnotes 247
and 248, 273
Cochery, Adolphe, reporter on budget of 1877,
France, 297
Colbert, and relations to the statistics of
France, 217, 247-250, 253, 268, 271,
273, footnotes 247, 248, 249
Colquhoun, 18th century statistics in Great
Britain, 367
Commercial Statistics, 100, 120
International bureau of, 144
International Institute of, Brussels, 197
Corvinus, Mathias, King of Hungarians,
393
Cour, Mathon de la, "Collection des comptea
rendus," 273
Coumot, M., quoted, 265
Coville, M., "Les Cabochiens et I'ordinance
de 1413," footnote 234
Coze, Tench, one of the early statesmen of the
United States interested in statistics,
573, footnote 583, 671
Crest, Nicolas Bamaud du, probable author
of "Secret des Finances de France,
footnote 236 (see also Froumenteau,
Nicholaa)
Crop Reporting Institute, International, 211
Cuba, census in, 24, 666
Cummings, John
"Statistical Work of the Federal Govern-
ment of the United States," 573-689
" The permanent Census Bureau: a decade
of work," footnote 682
Cushing, Caleb, 5
Cuv^Uer, Dr., "Haard-Tellingen," footnote
429
Csoernig, Charles, Baron von, first president
of Austrian Statistical Commission,
94
Cioernig, Karl, creator of new era in Austrian
statistics, 88
Dangeau, Abb6 de, characterized as "pre-
curseur de la statistique," 255-256
Davenport, Dr. C. B., organizer of Eugenics
Record office. Long Island, N. Y., 35
De Bow, J. B. D., U. S. Census, 1850, quoted,
8, 680
Dean, John Ward, early leader American
Statistical Association, 12
Deferridre, M., of French Ministry of In-
terior, 1801, 291
Dejeau, Etienne, "Un Pr^fet du consulat,
Beugnot," footnote 292
Delmar, Alexander, first director Bureau of
Statistics in U. S. Treasury Depart-
ment, 586-587, 680
Demography, science of, 31-32, 33
750
MEMORIAL VOLUME
DENMASK
Agriculture, statistics of, 202, 203, 206,
207-208
Birth statistics, 202, 203, 206, 208
Cominercial statistics, 209
Criminal statistics, 202, 204, 206, 208
Death statistics, 202, 203, 206, 208
Education, statistics of, 206
Elections, statistics of, 206
Finance, statistics of, 204, 206, 209
Fisheries, statistics of, 206
Imports and exports, statistics of, reports,
203, 206
Industries, statistics of, 204, 206, 208
Instruction in statistics, 210
International statistics in Denmark, 206,
211
Judicial statistics, 204, 206
Labor statistics, 204, 208-209
Legislation bearing on statistics, 205-207
Marriage statistics, 202, 203, 206, 208
Migration statistics, 206
Morals, public, statistics of, 206
Norway, statistical relations with, 201,
202, 448, 450, 453
Population, enumerations, 201, 202, 203,
206
PubUcations, statistical
Agriculture, 203
Births, 203
Deaths, 203
Finance, 204
Imports and exports, 203
International Appendix (Denmark, Nor-
way, Sweden), 453
Marriages, 203
Official list, appendix, 212-14
Shipping, 203
Statistical communications, 204
Statistical Department issues, 206 (see
Appendix)
Tabulating Commission issues, 202, 203-
204
Year Book, 204, 205, 209
Shipping, statistics of, 203
Social statistics, 205, 206 (see also Trade,
iTidustry, and Labvr')
Statistical Bureau, 203, 204
Statistical Offices in other Departments,
205
Statistics, Department of, 201, 204-205
Activities, 205, 206
Advantages of centralization in, 210
Staff, 209-210
Statistics, offices in charge of, 19th cen-
tury, 201
Working of, 207-210
Tabulating Commission, 202-203
Tabulating Office, Danish-Norwegian, 1797,
201, 202
DENMARK— Continued
Talis agreement, statistics of, 209
Trade statistics, 202, 203, 204-208
Deparcieux, M., "Essai," 265
Derby, Hon. E. H., 9
Desmarets, M., one of Colbert's successors,
249-250
Dexter, "Lord Timothy," alluded to, 36
Dexter, Samuel, secretary U. S. Treasury,
1800, 584
Dewey, Dr. Davis R., a leader in American
Statistical Association, 13
Didot, M., " Nouvelle Biographie Universelle,"
footnote 236
Duquesnoy, M., director bureau de atatisftgue,
1799, France, 291
Durand, E. Dana, 8
Duruy, Victor, "Chronologie de I'Atlas
Historique de la France," footnote 247
Duvillard, M., author of a mortality table,
1805, France, 266
£
Eden, alluded to (Great Britain), 367
Eicba, Glanz Hitter von, president of Austrian
Statistical Commission, 94, 97
Eiserhort, Charles Eisler Hitter von, Austrian
statistician, 100
Eliott, S. B., early leader, American Statistical
Association, 8, 11-12
Elswehr, Demel Ritter von, Austrian office
of Statistics for Foreign and Interstate
Trade under, 103
Elvius, Per, secretary, Swedish Academy of
Science, 539
Engel, Ernst, director, Saxon and later
Prussian Statistical State Office, 351,
362
Espinas, "Des TMories PoUtiques," al-
luded to, 237
Ezpilly, abb£ d', Dictionnaire G£ographique
footnote 239, 262, 283
Fagniez, M,, "jStude Sur I'lndustrie, "
footnotes 222, 231
Falkenburg, Dr., director municipal statisti-
cal bureau, Amsterdam, 441
Farr, Dr. William, organizer of British vital
statistics, 9, 30, 31
Faure, Femand, "Development and Progress
of statistics in France, " 217-329
Felt, Joseph B. early leader American Statisti-
cal Association, 10
F^n^lon, " Directions pour la conscience d'un
roi," 251, 252, 253, 259, 283
Ficker, Dr. Adolf, president Austrian Statisti-
cal Commission, 97
Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, tables published
1707, footnote 241
INDEX
751
Fletcher, Hon. Richard, early leader, Ameri-
can Statistical AsBociation, 10, 26
Forbonnais, Veron de, "Reoherohea et Con-
sldteations sur les Finances de la
France depuis I'Annfe 1595 jusqu'a
I'annfe 1721," 250, 272
Foisell, H., "Description of Sweden in 1571,"
554
Foster, Sir George, 195
Fortunatow, Prof., Russian statistician,
489, 506, 521, 525
Fourier, Notions gSiUraies sur la population,
footnote 289
FoviUe, Alfred de, head of Bureau de Statis-
tique et de legislation compar^e, 1876,
162, 270, 297, 298, 319, 324, footnotes
271, 286-287
FRANCE
Accidents, industrial, statistical publica-
tions on, 311-312
Actes de I'dtatMsivil, 242-243, 248, 262,
264, 265, 280, 282, 289-290, 305, 306,
309, 310-311
Agiicole, Bureau des Subsistances et de la
Statistique (see also Institutions)
298-299
Agricoles, office de renseigments, duties,
future and program of, 299-303, 312
(see also Itistitutians)
Agriculture, committee of, 1782, 270-271
Ministry of, 305, 312-315
Statistics, 24, 232, 292, 312-315
Agriculture statistics (see also Agricole,
Bureau de and Office de)
Banks, statistical publications on opera-
tions of, 312, 322
Baptisms, statistics of, 242, 263 (see also
Actes de V&at-Civil)
Biblioth£que, section of, 306
Birth statistics, 260, 285-286, 290, 311
(see also Actea de V6tat-Civit)
Burial statistics, 263. (see also Actes de
l'6tat-Civil)
Colbert and statistics, 247-249
Colonial statistics, 322-323
Colonies, ministry of, 306, 322-323
Commerce
Bureaus of, 268-269
Industry, Posts and Telegraphs, Minis-
try of, 306, 321-322
Maritime, 232
Statistics of, 268, 292-293, 317, 321-322
(see also Economic Statistics)
Commodities, statistics of, 229-232
Communes, financial situation in, 323-324
Compilations and calculations, section of,
306
Conseil Supdrieur de Statistique, 303-
304, 307 (see also Institutions)
FRANCE — Continued
Cur£, importance of in history of statistics,
253
Customs statistics, 267-268, 270, 316-317
(see also Economic Statistics)
Death statistics, 242, 263, 265-266, 290,
311 (see also Actes de Vftat-Civil)
Demographic statistics
8th-13th centuries, 221-223
14th-16th centuries, 237-243
17th-18th centuries, 256-265
19th century, 284-289
Section of, 306
Departments, financial situation in, 323-
324
Economic statistics,
14th-16th centuries, 229-233
17th-18th centuries, 266-271
During Revolution, 280
Section of, 306
Education (see Instruction)
Educational institutions, Neufchateau,
280
Enumerations, year 762 limited, 220
Partial, 289
Etat-Civil (see Actes de)
Exports (see Economic Statistics)
Finance, Ministry of, 305, 316-319, 320
Statistics of. 8th-13th centuries, 224-225
14th-16th centuries, 233-237
17th-18th centuries, 271-275
Communes and departments, 323-324
During Revolution, 281
Present organization of, 315-319
Publication, 292
Finances, Bureau de Statistique et de
Legislation compar6e du MinistSre de,
296-298
Fisheries, statistics of, 327 (see also Navv,
Ministry of)
Foreign Affairs, Ministry of, 305, 324
Statistics of, 324
Forestry, publications on, 314
Graphic statistics, 294-295
Imports (see Economic Statistics)
Industrial statistics, section of, 306
Industry, statistics of, 24, 280, 292-293
Industry (see Commerce)
Institutions, statistical, 19th century, 291-
305
Intendants, m£moires and work of, 217-
218, 247, 248, 249, 260-256, 257, 258,
260-264
Instruction, Ministry of Public, 306, 325
Statistics of public, 325
Interior, Ministry of, 305, 323-324
International Statistical Library, organiza-
tion of, 303
International statistics conceived by
Neoker, 276
752
MEMORIAL VOLUME
FRANCE — Continued
Justice and Penal Institutions, Ministry of,
306, 325
Statistics of, 325
Justice, Bureau de Statist! que du MinistSie
de la, 293-294 (see also Inatitutiona)
Labor and Social Welfare, ministry of,
306-312
Labor, publications on conditions of, 311
Land registrations, year 752, 220-221
Statistics, 221, 225-228 (see also Polyp-
tiques)
Latin Union, France, Belgium, Italy,
Switzerland, 318-319
Legislation, bearing on statistics, 14th-
16th centuries, 230, 231, 232-233, 234,
242
17th-18th centuries, 262-263, 278-279,
282
19th century, 284, 285, 287-288, 294,
298-301, 303, 306, 322
Manufactures statistics, Neufchateau, 280
Marriage statistics, 242, 263, 290, 311
"MSmoires des Intendants," 250-256,
257, 260-261
Military organization, 223
Mines, statistics of, 320-321
Ministries for which statistics have eco-
nomic character, 305, 306-324
For which statistics have military char-
acter, 306, 326-327
For which statistics have moral charac-
ter, 306, 325
Responsible for making enumerations, 284
Municipal statistics, 289-291
Navigation, statistics of internal, 320
Navy, Ministry of, 306, 326-327
Necker and statistics, 275-277
Paris, le Bureau de Statistique de la Ville
de, 304-305 (see also iTiatitrttiona)
Statistical Society, 20
Penal Institutions (see Juatice)
Pensions, statistics of, publications, 312
Polyptiques (see PublicatioTia)
Population, statistics of, 8th-13th cen-
turies, 221-223
14th-16th centuries, 237-240
17th-18th centuries, 256-266
During Revolution, 278
19th century, 34, 284-287, 288, 292 (see
also Demographic Statiatica and Mi-
moires des Intendants)
Posts (see Commerce)
Pubhcations, statistical,
Actes de I'Stat CSvil, 248, 289-290, 305,
310-311
Agriculture, 299, 301, 302, 313-315
Album de Statistique Graphique, 294-
295, footnote 310
"Aimuaire Statistique de la France,"
276, 293, 303, 307-309
FRANCE — Continued
Publications — Continued
Annuaire Statistique de la Ville de Paris,
305
Bulletin de la Statistique g£n€rale dela
France, 309
Bureau issues, 292
Colonies, 322-323
Commerce, Industry, Posts and Tele-
graphs, Ministry of, 321-322
Conseil, report of dehberations of, 304
Demographic, 237-238, 240, 242, 262
Early (9th century), 222
Finance, footnote 224, 234, 236-237,
245-246, 272-275, 281-282, 296, 298,
315-319
Fisheries, 327
Foreign affairs, ministry of, 324
Foreign trade, 268, 269, 270
Industry (see Commerce)
Instruction, ministry of public, 325
Intendants (see MSmoirea)
Land statistics (see Polyptiquea)
Interior, Ministry of, 323-324
Justice and Penal Institutions, Ministry
of, 293-294, 325
Labor, ministry of, 311-312
Mtooires des Intendants, 217-218, 250-
256, 257, 258, 260-264
Municipal, 289-290
Navy, ministry of, 326-327
Necker, 272, 274, 275
Paris, city of, 304-305
Polyptiques, year 762, 221, 222, 223, 225,
226-227 (see also Land Statistics)
Posts (see Commerce)
"Prisge," 223
Private works, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227,
228, 230, 234, 236-238, 240, 241, 243,
250, 255, 256, 258, 262, 265, 266, 270-
273, 277, 279, 281, 282, 285-287, 292,
293, 295, 304, 305. Footnotes, 217,
222-224, 226, 227, 229-242, 244, 245,
247-262, 264, 265, 267-271, 277, 280-
282, 284, 285, 289-292, 296, 303
Revolution, 279-280
Service de la Statistique G6nfaale com-
pilations and publications, 307-309,
311
Special works on limited topics, direction
of enumerations, compilation and
pubUcation, 309-312
"Tableaux d'arithmfitique lin&ire," 295
Telegraphs (see Commerce)
War, Ministry of, 326
Works, Ministry of pubUc, 320-321
Railways, statistics of, 320
Revolution (see Statistics and)
Roads, statistics of national, 319-320
Sections of department of Statistique
G6nfoale, 306
INDEX
753
FRANCE— Coirfinued
Social statistics, section of, 306
Social Welfare, Ministry of Labor and, 306-
312
Statistical Institutions (see Institutions)
Statistics, actual organization of, 305-327
Bureau of, 1799, 125
Colbert and, 247-249
First department devoted to, 268
History of, 217-305
Sth-lSth centuries, 220-228
14th-16tli centuries, 228-243
17tli and ISth centuries, 243-283
igth century, 283-305
Neoker and, 275-277
Progress of, 327-329
Revolution and, 277-283
Sully and, 244-247
Statistique G^^rale, Bureau de la, 291-
293 (see also Institutions)
Statistique G&i€rale de la France, Service
de, sections of department, 306-312
Strikes, statistics of, publications, 311
Sully and statistics, 244-247
Telegraphs (see Commerce)
Territory statistics publication, 292
Terray, circular of, 1772, 262-264
Trade, domestic statistics, of, do not exist,
321
Foreign, statistics of, 316-317
Transportation statistics, 294
Travauz Publics, Bureau de Statistique du
Ministere des, 294-295, 305, 319-321
(see also Institutions)
War, ministry of, 306, 326
Statistics of, 326
Water power, statistics of, publications,
314 and footnote
Works, Ministry of Public, 294-295, 305
319-321
Friedenfels, Baron Drotlefl von, "The
amount of Income according to Sex
and calling of those assessed," 110
Froumenteau, Nicholas, "Le Secret des
Finances de France dficouvert et
d£parti en trois livres," 236-237, 240
Fruin, Prof., " Informacie, " footnote 429
G
Gallatin, Albert, footnote 581, 584
Galton, Francb, footnote 30
Gannett, Dr. Henry, originator in United
States of Statistical Atlas, 29, 30
Garfield, Jas. A., quoted, 615-616 footnote
670, 676
Gamier, Germain, table of corn prices, toot-
note 241
Georgiewski, Prof., Russian statistician, 479,
484, 498, 502
49
GERMANY
Agriculture statistics, 24,337, 346, 356, 357-
358
Alsace-Lorraine, statistics in, 339
Anhalt, statistics in, 339
Banks, statistics of savings, 361
Baden, statistics in, 339, 345
Bavaria, statistics in, 334, 338, 340, 345,
350, 351, 361
Berlin, statistics in, 340, 351, 354
Birth statistics, 355
Braunschweig, statistics in, 339, 352
Bremen, statistics in, 339
Building and dwelling statistics, 343, 357
Cement (see Industry)
Central division of statistics, 336-337
Chemicals (see Industry)
Commerce, statistics of foreign, 337, 344,
352-354
Commercial statistics, 335
Community division of statistics, 337
Death statistics, 346, 355
Death, statistics of causes of, 358-359
Dwelling statistics, 343 (see also Building)
Education, statistics of, 360-361
Federal division of statistics, 336-337
Finance statistics, 343, 359-360
Fisheries, statistics of, 344, 356
German Statistical Association, 1911, 349
Hamburg, statistics in, 339
Hessen, statistics in, 339, 345, 352
Imperial Statistical Institute, 362
Imperial statistical office.
Budget, compared to Russian, 473
Created 1872, 35, 337-338
Expenditures, of, 341
Industry, statistics of, 24, 335, 337, 342,
344, 356
Instruction in statistics, training of statis-
ticians, 345-346, 349
Insurance companies (see Industry)
Insurance, statistics of social, 358
International statistics in Germany, 361-362
Justice, statistics of penal institutions, 359
Kameralstatistik, 431
Labor (see Social Statistics)
Leather (fieeliidustry)
Legislation bearing on statistics, 343-344,
353
Lippe, statistics in, 339
Ldbeck, statistics in, 339
Mail service, statistics of, 361
Marriage statistics, 355
Mechlenburg-Schwerin, statistics in, 339,
345
Mechlenburg-Strelitz, statistics in, 339
Mills (see Industry)
Mines, statistics of, 335, 356
Motor vehicles (see Industry)
Municipal statistics, 340-341, 343
754
MEMORIAL VOLUME
GERMANY— CorUiftued
Occupation, inquiries into conditions of,
355, 356
Statistics, 335, 344
Oldenburg, statistics in, 339, 345, 352
Organizations (see Social and Labor Siaiis'
tics)
Pensions, old age, 39
Population, enumerations, 34, 335. 337. 342
Inquiry into conditions of, 333-334
Statistics, 343, 354-356
Prices, statistics of, 35S
Prussia, statistics in. 334, 338, 340, 345,
350, 351
Publications, statistical
Agriculture, 356, 358
Bavarian office issues, 350
Building and dwelling conditions, 357
Collective and comprehensive memoirs
of the statistical offices, 351-352
Commerce. 349, 353-354
Comprehended under imperial statistics,
350
Criminal statistics, 349
Early works, 333
Federated states issues, 350-351
Finance, 359-360
Imperial office (see OffidaJ)
Industries, 356-357
Judicial, 359
Non-official — dealing with entire field of
activity of statistical offices. 352
Occupation, 355-356
Official issues, imperial statistical office,
350
Population enumerations, 355-356
Private works, 336, 349
Prussian office issues, 340, 350
Reference works of refined statistical
inquiries, lacking, 349
Saxony office Issues, 340, 350
Social and labor investigations, 358
Trade. 356
Railways, statistics of, 350, 361
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, statistics in, 339
Saxe-Meiningen, statistics in, 339
Saxe-Weimar, statistics in, 339
Saxony, statistics in, 334, 338, 340, 350, 351
Schaumburg-Lippe, statistics in. 339
Social and labor statistics, 358
Special division of statistics, 336-337
Social statistics, 342
Statistical investigation, subjects of. 352-
361
Statistical offices, organization and activity
of, 338-352
Internal organization of, 345-349
Statistics
Allotment of work in offices, 344-345
Birth of, eighteenth century, 366
GERMANY— Continued
Statistics — Continued
Commissions to bring about co-operation,
345
Distribution horizontal and vertical,
341-342
Divisions of
1. Central statistics, 336-337
2. Community statistics. 337
3. Federal statistics, 336, 337
4. Special statistics, 336-337
Fault in scattered publications, 349
Historical development of. 333-338
Mimicipal offices of. 340-341, 343
Personnel of offices, 341
Progress of. 341. 361-362
Relations between imperial and federated
state offices, 342, 343
State bureaus of. 338-340
" Unreleased" compiled by other de-
partments. 341
Strikes, statistics of (see Social and Labor
Statistics)
Tariff Union, statistics of, 334-335
Taxation statistics, 360
Textiles (see Industry)
Thtiriugian office (see Saxe-Weimar)
Trade, statistics of, publication, 356
Unemployment statfetics (see Social and
Labor Statistics)
" Unreleased" statistics, 341
Wages, statistics of, 358
Waldeck, statistics in, 339-340
Working men's insurance, 39
Wurttemburg, statistics in, 334, 338, 340,
344. 345, 352, 361
Gettemy, Charles F., "Work of the several
States of the United States in the Field
of Statistics," 690-739
Giffen. Sir Robert, Statistical Branch, British
Board of Trade. 374
Glaeson. M.. "Histoire du Droit et des
Institutions de la France," footnotes
224, 229, 233, 234. 235
Godfrey, Ernest H.. ''History and Develop-
ment of statistics in Canada," 179-198
Gounard, R€n6, alluded to. footnote 257
Grant. Capt. John, "Observations," 365
Graphic statistics, papers on, 29. 30, footnote
30
Graunt, "Political Arithmetic." 429
GREAT BRITAIN
Advancement of Science, British Associa-
tion for, statistical section, 385
Agriculture, Department of (see Depart'
mental)
Returns required by statute, 372
Statistics of, 376-377, 383
Aliens (see Departmental Administration,
Home Office)
Army, 383
INDEX
755
GREAT BRITAIN— Continued
Bank of England, 383
Banks, P. O. savingB, statistics of, 378,
383
Banks, retuma required by statute, 372
Baptism statistics, 16th century, 365
Census, arrangements in United Kingdom,
investigation by Royal Statistical
Society, 386
Decennial, begvm 1801, 367-368
Placed under Bfigistrars General, 370,
380, 383
Coinage, statistics of, 383
Commerce, statistics of, 374, 378-379,
382-384
County administration, statistics of, 375-
376
Crime, investigation by Royal Statistical
Society, 386
Statistics of, 373, 383
Customs Office (see Departvientdl)
Statistics, 14tli century, 365
17th century, 366
Present, 378-379
Death statistics, 16th century, 365, 366
18th century, 367
19th century, 368
Debt (see DepartmenUd Administratiorit
TTeasury Department)
Demographic statistics, 31
Departmental administration of statistics,
372-382
Agriculture, Department of, 373, 376-
377, 383
Customs office, 378-379, 383
Education, Board of, 377-378, 383
Home office, 372-373, 383
Inland Revenues, Department of, 378,
384
Labor Department (Board of Trade),
375, 384
Local Government Board, 373, 375-376,
383, 384
Registrar General, 379-380, 383
Trade, Board of, 35, 373-376, 383, 384
Treasury, Department of, 378, 383
Duties, statistics of, 378
Economic statistics, 371
Education, Board of (see Departmental)
Investigation by Royal Statistical So-
ciety, 386
Statistics of, 370-371, 377-378, 383
Emigration (see Departmental Adminietror
tion. Board of Trade)
Factories, statistics of, 371, 373, 383
financial and fiscal statistics, 382-384
Fisheries, statistics of, 377, 383
Health and population statistics, 382-385
Health statistics, 376
Hollerith System, footnote 25
GREAT BRITAIN— Conitnued
Home office (see Departvientdl)
India office, 372, 424 (see also India)
Industrial statistics, 382-384
Inland Revenues, Department of (see De-
partmental)
Insurance, returns required by statute, 372
Statistics, 366, 371, 383, 384
International statistics in Great Britain,
387-389
Ireland
Agriculture, Board of, 377
Bankruptcy, 383
Crime, 383
Dublin Society, founded, 1847, 386
Education, Boards of, 378
Connected with state, 371, 383
Emigration, 383
Litigation, 383
Local Government Board, 376
Local government statistics. County
Council Act 1898, 370
Miscellaneous statistics, 373
Prisons, 383
Reformatories, 383
Registrar General, annual review pub-
Ushed by, 373, 376, 377, 380, 383
Trade with, specially published by Cus-
toms Office, 379
Vital statistics about 1863, 370
Joint-stock companies (see DepartmerUiA
Administration, Board of Trade)
Labor Department (see Departmental)
Legislation bearing on statistics, 367, 368
Census acts, 370
Education, 370-371
Insurance (see Penaiona)
Local administration, 376
Local government and taxation, 370
Originating since 1833, 372
Paternal, and results, 371
Pensions and insurance, 371
Sanitary administration of urban and
rural areas, 370
Litigation statistics, 373
Local Government Board (see Departmental)
Local government, statistics of, 370, 383
London Statistical Society, 5, 19, footnote
30
Lunacy (see Departmental Administraiion,
Local Government Board)
Manchester Statistical Society, footnote 19,
385, 386
Manufactures (see Production, census of)
Meteorology, statistics of, 377
Mines, statistics of, 371, 373, 383
Miscellaneous statistics, 373, 383, 384
Moral and social statistics, 382-384
Municipal administration, statistics of,
375-376, 383
756
MEMORIAL VOLUME
GREAT BRITAIN— ConiiriKed
Navigation (see DepartmeTitai Administra-
tion, Customs OMce)
Navy, 383
Pauperism statistics, 44-45, 375, 383
Pensions, statistics of, 39, 371, 383
Police, statistics of, 373
Population, Malthus* works on, 367
Population and health statistics, 382-384
Population statistics
Domesday Book, 365
King's and Houghton's estimates, 366
Postal service, telegraph and telephones,
statistics of, 378, 383
Posts, telegraphs, telephones, returns re-
quired by statute, 372
3E*rices (see De-paHmental Administration,
Board of Trade)
Prisons, statistics of, 373, 383
Production, census of, 26, 370, 375, 383
Production statistics, 382-384
Publications, statistical
Agriculture, Department of, 377-378, 383
Customs office, 379, 383, 384
^arUest records that may be called such,
365
]E;ducation Board of, 378, 383
Some office, 373, 383, 384
India Office Abstract, 424 (see India)
Inland Revenues, Department of, 378,
383
Inquiry by Special Committee on De-
partmental Statistics, quoted, 381
International statistics, efforts to render
comparison possible, 388
Local Governmental Board, 376, 383, 384
Non-official bodies, 384
Official, 383-384
Popvdation (see Private works)
Post office, 368, 383
Private works, 365, 366, 367, 384
Royal Calendar, 1730, 366
Royal Statistical Society Journal, 19, 382,
386
"Tableaux d'arithmgtique linfiaire," 295
Taxation (see Inland Rnenues, De-
partment of)
Trade, Board of, 374-375, 383, 384
Vital statistics, 31
Railways, returns required by statute, 372
Statistics, 383
Reformatories, statistics of, 373, 383
Registrar General (see Departmental)
Royal Statistical Society, 9, 19, 385-386
Journal of, 19, 382, 386
Sanitation (see Departmental Administra-
tion, Local Goftemment Board)
Scotland
Agriculture, Board of, 377
Bankruptcy, 383
GREAT BRITAIN— Continued
Scotland — Continued
Crime, 383
Education, Board of, 377
Education connected with state, 1839,
371, 383
Litigation, 383
Local Government Board, 376
Miscellaneous statistics, 373
Prisons, 383
Reformatories, 383
Registrar General, 380
Societies, 383
Vital statistics, 1853, 370
Shipping, returns required by statute,
372, 383
Social and moral statistics, 382-384
Societies, statistics of, 371, 375, 379, 383,
384
Statistical Department, created 1832, 368
Statistics, departmental administration of
(see Departmental)
Departments in which each main branch
of statistics may be found (Commer-
cial, Financial, Fiscal, Health, Indus-
trial, Population, Production, Social
and Moral), 382-384
Statistics, departmentalism chief charac-.
teristic, 380-382
Faults of, 389
Non-official, 384
Official, 368-384
Organization of, by Board of Trade, 369
Outlook favorable to progress, 389
Progress of official, 369-370
Relations with other countries, 387-389
Setbacks from insurance companies and
poHtical economy, 368
Societies cooperating with state depart-
ments, 368
Societies for study of, 385-387
British Association for Advancement
of Science, statistical section, 385
Dublin Society, 386-387
London Society, 5, 19, footnote 30
Royal Statistical Society, 385-386
Statistical Society, Manchester, foot-
note 19, 385-386
Strikes (see Departmental Administration,
Labor Department)
Taxation statistics, 370, 378, 384
Telegraphs, telephones (see Posts)
Trade, Board of, (see Departmental)
Trade statistics, 383, 388
Unions (see Societies)
Training in statistical theory and method,
387
Tramways (see Depa/rtmental Administra/-
tion, Board of Trade)
Treasury Department (see Departmental)
INDEX
7ST
GREAT BRITAIN— C(m«nued
Vital statistics, 30-31
Capt. John Grant's "Observations," 36fi
Civil registration, 1837, 370
International comparison, 3SS
Registrar General, provider of, 379-380,
383
Wage-earning classes, statistics of, 375, 384
Wages, investigation by Royal Statistical
Society, 386
Wateo
Local Government Board statistics, 375
Miscellaneous statistics published by
Home Department, 373
Registrar General, one for England and
Wales, 379
Workingmen's insurance, 39
Green, Dr. Samuel A. (quoted), 6
Grimm, Baron, footnote 257
Guirard, M., polyptique published by, foot-
note 226
Guigne, M., polyptique published by, foot-
note 227
Guillaimin, M. de, "Collection des Econ-
omistes," footnote 277
Guillaumin, M., footnote 268
Guinchard, J., editor second Historical Statis-
tical Handbook, Sweden, 567
Halley, estimate of mortality, 366, 544-545
Hamilton, Alexander, 573, 574-575, 579-581
Harlan, Justice John M., quoted, 614
Harvey, Arthur, editor Canadian Year Book,
194
Hawaii, 635, 696
Hazard," Statistical Register" 5
Hellstenius, J., lectures on comparative
population statistics, Sweden, 555
Hennequin, Jean, "Le Guidon G£n€ral des
Financiers, " footnote 224, 234
Herbin, "La Statistique G^nSrale de la
France," footnote 291
Heuschling, Xavier, Belgian statistician,
footnote 126, 130, footnote 131
Hoffman, Frederick Ludwig, "Fifty Years of
American Life Insurance," footnote
26,37
Hohenbabel, Baron Louis von, president
Austrian Statistical Commission, 97
Hohn, John, United States Bureau of Foreign
and Domestic Conmierce, quoted, foot-
note 592
Holoh, A., " History of the Danish Statistics, "
footnote 201
Holder, Arthur E., labor article, footnote 637
Hollerith, Dr. Herman, inventor United States
census tabulating system, footnote 25
System used in Austria, footnote 25
System \ised in Canada, footnote 25
Hollerith, Dr. Herman — Continued
System used in Germany, 353, 354
System used in Great Britain, footnote 25
System used in Norway, 459
System used in Russia, footnote 25
System used in United States, 678
Houghton, population estimate of Great
Britain, 366
Hudde, Johan, Dutch mathematician, 430
HUNGARY
Accidents, agricultural, 410
Industrial, 410-411
Agriculture statistics, 399, 409, 412
Austria, statistical relations with, 394, 397-
398, 399 (see also Puhlicalions,
Austro-Hungarian)
Birth statistics, 409 (see also Vital Statieticei
Budapest, Statistical Bureau of, 396
Census, 396, 397, 398-399, 412
Central Statistical Office
Budget, 413
Creation, 1897, 399-400, 401-402
Education of persomiel, 402-403
Guarantees to individuals, 407, 408
Inquiries guaranteed by law, 405
Investigations carried on by, 409-413
Library, 402
Personnel, 413
Points of contact with highest constitu-
tional forum, 404-405, 407-408
Powers given by law, 406
Relations with individuals, 405-409
Commerce, statistics of, 397-398, 410
Criminal statistics, 399 (see also Law,
Statistics of)
Croatia
Creation of Croatian-Slavonian Statistical
Office, 396
Statistical office of Croatia-Slavonia
independent, information at disposal
of Hungarian Central Office, 401-402
Death statistics, 409 (see also Vital Statia-
tica)
Economic statistics, 400
Emigration statistics (see Population!
movements of)
Enumerators, compensation of, 405-406
Health statistics, 409
Hunting, statistics of, 409
Immigration statistics (see Populationt
movements of)
Industry, statistics of, 396, 410
Instructioninstatistics, University of Buda-
pest, 396
Instruction, statistics of public, 399, 411-
412
Insurance institutions, statistics of, 411
International statistics in Hungary, 396,
401
Investigations, continuous official, 409-413
758
MEMORUL VOLUME
HUNGARY— Continued
Law, statistics of, 412
Legislation bearing on statistics, 396, 399,
400, 401-403, 405-408
Marriage statistics, 409 (see also Vital
StatisUca)
Mills, statistics of, 410
Mines, statistics of, 410
Miscellaneous statistics, 409-410, 411, 412-
413
Population statistics, 400 (see also Cen-
sus)
Population, statistics of movements of, 409
Prices, statistics of market, 410
Publications, statistical,
Accidents, 409
Agriculture, 409
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Official
Manual, 97, 102, 103, 107-108
Central Statistical Office issues (see
Official)
Commerce, 410
Crime (see Law)
Eariy, 394
Health statistics, 409
Hunting, statistics of, 409
Increase of, 399
Industry, 410
Instruction, statistics of public, 411-412
Insurance institutions, 411
International statistics of wine-growing,
396
Investigations, continuous official, 409-
413
Law, statistics of, 412
Library of Central Office, 402
Mills, 410
Mining, 410
Miscellaneous, 409-412
Official, 396-397, 400, 403-405, 409-412
Population, 409
Prices, market, 410
Private works, 394
Railroads, 411
Religion, 412
Strikes, 410
Trade, 411
Vital statistics, 409
Year Book, 404-405, 407
Railroads, statistics of, 411
Religion, statistics of, 412
Sanitary statistics, 412
Slavonia
Creation of Croatian-Slavonian Statis-
tical Office, 396
Statistical office of Croatia-Slavonia in-
dependent, information at disposal
of Hungarian Central Office, 401-402
Statistical Bureau, Budapest, 396
Statistical Office, Central (see Central)
HUNGARY— Continued
Statistical Office, Croatia-Slavonia, 396
Statisticians, celebrated, 400
Statistics, 1867, prior to, 393-395
1867, official statistical organization
created, department of Ministry for
Agriculture, Industry and Trade, 395
1871, statistical office, 396
1874, la^Tra, first local regulation of official
statistics, 396
1897, Central Statistical Office of King-
dom of Hungary, 399-400
Difficulties encountered in, throilgh dif-
ferences in language and religion, 397-
398
Future of, 413-414
Improvements in statistical technique,
397
Inquiries guaranteed by law, 405
More detailed than in other countries,
398
Obligation of citizens to furnish, 406
Strikes, statistics of, 410
Trade, statistics of export, 397-398, 399
Trade, statistics of foreign, 411
Vital statistics, 399, 409
Wine-growing, international statistics of,
396
Year Book (see Puhlicdtiona)
Hunt. William C, alluded to, footnote 670
Huth, Dr., German imperial office, footnote
352
Huygens, Christiaan, a founder of computa-
tion of probabilities, Netherlands, 430
Inama-Sternegg, Charles Theodore von,
president Austrian Statistical Com-
mission, 98-99, 100, 116, 120
INDIA
Agricultural and Revenue Department,
422^23
Agriculture, statistics of, distinguished
from land as revenue producing agent,
421
Land as revenue producing agent, 417,
422-423, 424, 426
Army, statistics of imperial, 422
Bengal, 418
Bihar, 419, 425
Bombay, 419, 425
Buildings, statistics of, 422, 425
Burma, 419
Census, 1881, at 10-year intervals, 421
Census office as permanent institution
lacking, 421
Commerce and Industry, Department of,
423
Commerce, statistics of, 423, 424-425
Cotton (see Industry)
INDEX
759
INDIA— Continued
Criminal statistics, reports, 425 (see also
Judicial Statistics)
Customs statistics, 419, 424
Delhi, taxation statistics alone recorded
by Muslim emperors of, 417
Departmental administration of statistics
Agricultural and Revenue Department,
422-423
Commerce and Industry, Department of,
423
Education, Department of, 423
Finance, Department of, 422
Home Department. 422
Works Department of Public, 422
Director General of Statistics, 423
Education, Department of, 423
Statistics of, 421, 423, 425
Emmigration reports, 425 (see also
PopulaHon)
Factory inspection statistics, 421, 423
Finance, Department of, 422
Statistics of, 417, 419, 421, 422, 425
Forestry statistics reports, 426
Health statistics reports, 425
Home Department, 422
Imperial organization of statistics, 421-
426 (see also Provincial)
India office. Great Britain, 372, 424
Industry, Department of Commerce and,
423
Statistics of, 421, 423, 424
Irrigation systems, 419, 422, 425
Judicial statistics, 422, 425
Jute (see Industry)
Legislation bearing on statistics, 420, 421
Local government, statistics of, 423, 426
Madras, 425
Meteorology statistics, 419. 422, 424, 425
Mine Inspection Acts, 424 (see also
Industrial Statistica)
Mine inspection statistics, 421, 423
Mines, statistics of, 421, 424
Miscellaneous statistics, 423, 424
Orissa, 419
Police, statistics of, 422
Post office statistics, 419, 425
Population enumerations, 421
Population statistics reports, 425
Prices, statistics of, publications, 423, 424
Provincial organization of statistics, 421-
426 (see also Imperial)
Publications, statistical
Agriculture, 424
Census reports, imperial and provincial,
424
Commerce and Industry, Department of,
423, 424
Imperial administration reports, 424-
426
mUlA— Continued
Publications — Continued
India Office, statistical abstract of, 424
Meteorology, 424
Mineral production, 424
Official table of all reports published,
424-426
Provincial Administration reports, 420-
421, 424, 425, 426
Railway report, 422
Secretary of State, annual statement of,
424, 425
"Statistics in British India" Department
of Commerce and Industry, 423-424
Works, Department of Public, 422
Railways, statistics of, 419, 421, 422, 425,
Religious sects, Indian census reports, 424-
Revenue Department, Agricultural and,
422-423
Revenue Statistics, reports, 425 (see also
Finance and Agriculture)
Roads, statistics of, 422, 425
Sanitation, statistics of, 421, 423, 425
Bind, 419
Societies, CoSperative Credit, 423, 425
Statistics, branches which established
themselves at outset, 417-418
Census office as permanent institution
is lacking, 421
Correct figures obtainable by study-
ing reports of eaoh province, 420-421
Departmental administration of (see
Departmerd(d)
Director General of, 423
District administration unit for, 419
Facts bearing upon, 418-419
Historical aspect, 421
Imperial subjects, 419, 422, 423, 424-426
Need for in tropical country, 417
Official organization, imperial and pro-
vincial, 421-426
Offspring of British rule, 417
Provincial subjects, 424-426
Taxation statistics alone recorded by
Muslim emperors, 417
Trade statistics, 417, 419, 421, 422, 423,
424-425
Telegraphs, statistics of, 419, 425
Vital statistics (see Population Reports)
Wages, statistics of, publication, 423, 424
Works, Department of Public. 422
International Agricultural Institute, 36, 389
International Appendix (Denmark, Norway,
Sweden), 453
International Bureau of Commerce, 144
International Bureau of Statistics, 442
International Crop Reporting Institute, 211
International Institute of Commerce, Brus-
sels, 197
International law, relation of statistics to, 48
760
MEMORIAL VOLUME
International Statistical CongreBS, &~9, 20,
120, 396, 397, 434, 454, 465, 471, 599-
600
International Statistical Library, organization
of, 303
International Statistical Institute, 9, footnote
30, 47, 61, 67, 120, 197, 211, footnote
318, 319, 362, 388-389, 441-442, 673
International statietics
Austria, 93, 100, 120
Denmark. 206, 211
France, 276
Germany, 361-362
Great Britain, 387-389
Hungary, 396, 401
Necker and, 276
Norway, 464
KuBsia, 471
Sweden, 554, 567
United States, 636-637, 639
International Statistics of Commerce, 100, 120
International Union for dealing with the
Problem of the Unemployed, 121
Ireland (see Great Britain)
Irminon, abb6, "Polyptique," 226-227
Kereeeboom, Hollander W., table of deaths,
430-431, 539
Kiaer, A. N., "History and Development of
Statistics in Norway," 447-465
King, Gregory, population estimate of Great
Britain, 366
King, William A., vital statistics, United
States, 33
Kluit, Prof. A., lectures on statistics, Nether*
lands, 431
Knibbs, George Handley, "The History and
Development of the Statistical System
of Australia," 55-81
Kohary, Prince, 86
Koren, John, "American Statistical Associa-
tion," historical address, 3-14, foot-
note 25, 34
Kdrosy, Josef von, Hungarian statistician, 400
Kraft, Judge Jens, "Topographical and
Statistical Description of the Kingdom
of Norway," 450
Kuhn, Lieutenant Fieldmarshal Baron von,
Austrian military statistics, 111
Kiibeck, Baron von, Austrian Btatistician,'^88
Jahnson, J. E., Ruesian statistician, 477,
47&-479
Jarvie, Dr. Edward, American statistician,
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, footnote 25
Jekelfalusay, Josef von, Hungarian statistician,
400
Jensen, Adolf, "History and Development of
Statistics in Denmark," 201-214
John, v., Geschichte der Statistik, footnote 545
Johnson, Dr. George, director of Canadian
census, 1891, 184, 194
Jonnds, Moreau dc, "£16m€nts de Statis-
tique." 239, footnotes 217, 232, 239,
240, 262, 670
Jourdain, M., alluded to, 224
Jousserandot, M., translated Ardascheff's
work, footnote 253
Julin, Armand, "History and Development
of Statistics in Belgium," 125-175
Juraschek, Francis Kitter von, president
Austrian Statistical Commission, 100
Kauffmann, H., Russian monetary specialist,
' 478
Kaufmann, Dr. A., "History and Develop-
ment of Official Russian Statistics,"
469-534, 528
Keleti, Karl, Hungarian statistician, 97, 400
Kemper, Prof, de Bosch, initiated formation
of Union for Statistics, 435
Kerdijk, Dr., chairman Central Commission,
Netheriands, 438
Labor, International Bureau for Legal
Protection of, Basle, 121
Labor problem, doubtful outcome of Austra-
lian and New Zealand experiments, 41
Labor (see also Capital and)
Lantinghausen, Gen. J. A. von, proposed
introduction of tabular record in
Sweden, 539
Laplace, "Thfiorie Analytique des proba-
tions," 285, 286
Larde, Georges, tax study, France, by, foot-
note 251
Lannoy, Ch. De, director of reform of judicial
statistics, Belgium, 152
Latin Union, 318-319
Lavoisier, M., "R6sultats extraits d*un
ouvrage intitule ". . . 271, 277, 278.
283. 328
Lawson, Thomas, 5
Levasseur, Emile, French statistician, 29, 30,
223, 237, 238, 250, 255, 304, 325,
footnotes 30, 217, 231, 232, 233, 237,
238, 239, 240, 249, 264, 267, 268, 270,
280, 291, 293, 303
Libumau, X^renz von, director Austrian
Central Commission, 98
Liechtenstem, Baron von, Austrian etetisti-
cian, 86, 87
Lind8t5l, Tallak, Norwegian census of 1662
edited by, 447
Lobatto, initiated Year Book 1826-1849.
Netherlands. 432, 433
Longnon, M., new edition of the Polyptique
issued 1886, by, footnote 226
iisnoEX
761
Lottin, Joseph, Quetelet, footnote 126
Low, A. Maurice,-labor article by, footnote 637
Lubin, David, originated International Agri-
cultural Institute, 36
liunt, Edward C, 7
M
Majkow, L. N., vice-president Russian
Academy of Sciences, 478
Malet, M., Commis de Contrdle, ISth century,
249-250
Malle, Dureau de la, " Mtooires de I'Academie
des Inscription et Belles Lettres,"
238 and footnote
Mallet, "Comptes-rendus de 1' Administration
des Finances," 272-273
Malthus, Thomas, works on population, 367
Marion, Marcel, on financial work of Terray,
footnote 265
Marquis, G. E., Chief of Statistical Bureau,
Quebec, 193
Marshall, Alfred, 29, footnote 30
Masson, M,, Researches into customs statis-
tics 1660-1778, Marseilles, footnote 269
Mayr, G. von, only living signer of report of
1871, Germany, member of A. S. A.,
336, 352, 531
McCullock, Hugh, footnote 587
McGee, T. D'Arcy, Canadian minister of
agriculture, 1865, 181
Mercandin, Count, established Austrian
Statistical Commission, 89
Merriam, William R., director of census,
aided in establishment of permanent
census. United States, 27
Mespinasse, M. de, introduction, Histoire
G£n6rale de Paris, footnote 230
Messance (see Michadi^e, M, de Za.)
Methorst, Dr. H. W., second director of
Central Bureau of Statistics, Nether-
lands, 438, 442
Metzburg, Baron von, Austrian statistician
and author, 87-88
Meyer, Dr. Robert, "History and Develop-
ment of Government Statistics in
Austria," 85-122, 100, 101, 121
Michodidre, M. de la, InUndard of 18th cen-
tury, 257 and footnote, 258, 260, 262
Mirabeau, Marquis de, "Traits de la Popula-
tion," footnote 256
Mischler, Dr. Ernest, director Austrian
Statistical Commission, 100-101
Moheau (see M(mtyon, M. de)
Montalivet, M., "Expos6 de la Situation de
I'Empire," 293
Montchr^tien, Anthoyne de, "Traits d'Econ-
omie Politique," 244 and footnote, 253
Montesquieu, Marquis de, "Rapports,"
footnote 256, 281, 282
Montigny, Trudaine de, alluded to, 270
Montyon, M. de, Iniendant of 18th century,
257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266,
footnotes 257, 260, 261
Moreau, C€sar, president Socigt^ Frangaise
de Statistique Universelle, 270
N
Necker, and the general statistics of France,
218, 258, 260, 261, 262, 268, 269, 272,
274, 275-277, 278, 283, 328, footnotes
261, 262, 269, 270
Neill, Chas. P., labor article by, footnote 637
Nemours, Dupont de, "Aperfu" 270, 271,
footnote 271
NETHESLAHDS
Agriculture, statistics of, 24, 127, 439
Amsterdam, 436, 441
Annuities, relation to population and vital
statistics, 429-431
Banks, statistics of, 439
Belgium, statistical relations with, 126-
127, 432-^33
Birth statistics, 127, 431, 432, 437, 440-441
Census, 429, 431, 433, 437
Central Bureau of Statistics, branches of
statistics charged to, 439
Budget, footnote 440
Centralization of statistics under, 438-
439
Created 1899, 438
Extension of observations, 439-440
Measures tending to develop, 440-441
Personnel, footnote 440
Central Commission for statistics, 436-438
City bureaus of statistics, 435
Colonial statistics, 434
Commerce, statistics of, 127, 431, 433-434,
439
Death statistics, 127, 430-431, 432, 433,
437, 440-441
Departmental compilation of statistics, 433—
434
Economic statistics, 435, 436
Education, statistics of, 432
Elections, statistics of, 439
Exports (see Trade)
Finance statistics, 431, 433-434, 439, 440
Fisheries, statistics of, 127, 434
Hague, The ('s Gravenhagen) , seat of In-
ternational Statistical Institute, 441-
442
Home Affairs, Department of, statistical
bureau in, 432-433, 434
Imports (see Trade)
Industry, 24
Insanity, report on, 434
Judicial statistics, 1829, 433, 437, 439
Labor statistics, 437, 440
Legislation bearing on statistics, 431, 432,
433, 434, 436, 437, 438, 440
762
MEMORIAL VOLUMte
NETHERLANDS— Continued
Marriage statistics, 127, 431, 432, 440-441
Meteorology statistics, 127, 433, 434
Miniug statistics, 127
Miscellaneous statistics, 434, 437, 439, 440
Municipal statistics, 435, 441
Napoleon and statistics of Netherlands,
431-432
Pauperism, statistics of, 1814, 432, 439
Population statistics, 429-431, 433, 439,
440-141
Prison statistics (see Judicial Statiatics)
Prices, statistics of, 437
Publications, statistical
1827,126
1829, 127, 433
Annual, 1851-1868, 432, 433
Census, 433
Central Bureau issues, 432, 438, 439,
440, 443-444
Central Commission, 437, 438
Colonies, 434
Commercial, 434
Departmental issues, 433-434
Earliest, 429, 431
Economic, 435-436
Educational, 432
Financial, 434
Fisheries, 434
Insane, statistics of, 434
Judicial, 433
Labor, 440
Meteorology, 434
Miscellaneous, 437, 440
Napoleon's report, 432
Official list, 443-444
Pauperism, 432
Prisons, 432, 433
Private Works, 429 and footnote, 431
Strikes, 440
Telegraphs, 434
Trade, 432, 434
Union for statistics issues, 435-436
Wages, 440
Works, public, 434
Year Book, 432, 433, 435, 436, 437
Republic, statistics of Netherlands during,
431
Sanitation statistics, 127
Social statistics, 439-440
Statistical Institute established 1884 in
University at Amsterdam, 436, 437
Statistics
Belgium, and, 126-127, 432-433
Bureau of, 126, 432-435
Census, 429, 431, 433, 437
Central Bureau of (see Central)
Central Commission for, 437-438
Centralization increased value of, 438-
439
NETHERLANDS — Continued
Statistics — Continved
City bureaus, 435
Government Commission on, 1858, 434,
435
Municipal bureau of, 1894, 441
Napoleon and, 1810, 431-432
Republic and, 431
Sources, 429-430
Union for, 435-437
Strikes, statistics of, 440
Tax register, oldest known source of
statistics, 429
Telegraphs, statistics of, reports, 434
Trade statistics, 432
Union for statistics, 435-437
Utrecht, 441
Wages, statistics of, 437, 440
Works, statistics of public, reports, 434
Neufchateau, Francois de, and statistics of
France 1798, 1799, 279, 280, 283, 284,
291
Neuman-Spallart, Professor von, paper re-
viewing work of nine International
Statistical Congresses, footnote 47-48
Newoomb, H. T., article in North American
Review quoted, 623-624
Newlands, Hon. Francis G., urged establish-
ment of federal administrative organ to
supervise corporations, footnote 615
Nicander, Henrik, Swedish statistician, 547
NiooUe and Buffon, report by, 265
Nightingale, Florence, "Life or Death in
India," 12
North, S. N. D.,
"Seventy-five Years' Progress in Statis-
tics: the Outlook for the Future," 8,
15-49, footnote 25
NORWAY
Agriculture enumerations, special appro-
priations for, 460
Agriculture, statistics, 448, 450-451, 455,
462, 464
Banking, statistics of, 463
Birth statistics, 447, 458
Bureaus engaged in statistical work, 460-
461
Census, military, 1662, 447
Central Statistical Bureau, 1875, from old
Statistical Tabulating Office, 452-453
Budget, 459-460
Bureaus likewise engaged in statistical
work, 460-461
Method of work, 457-459
Organization, 459-460
Personnel, 460
Relation to social statistics, 457
Training of officials, 461
Christiania, commune of, statistical
office, 448, 461
INDEX
763
WOKWA.Y— Continued
Church and Eduoation, Department of*
460
Commerce and Customs, Department of
Finance, Christiania, 448
Commerce, Industry, and Fisheries, De-
partment for Social Affairs and, 459
Commerce, statistics of, 448, 451, 455,
458, 462, 464
Communal statistics, 455, 461, 462
Crime, 463 (see Judicial Statistics)
Customs, Department of Finance, Com-
merce and, Christiania, 448
Customs statistics (see Commerce)
Death statistics, 447, 455, 458, 462
Defense, Department of, 460
Denmark, statistical relations with, 201,
202, 448, 450, 453
Departments engaged in statistical work,
460-461
Economic statistics, 452
Education, Department of Church and,
451, 460
Education statistics, 451, 462
Elections, statistics of, 462
Emigration statistics, 458
Exports, reports on, 454
Finance, Commerce and Customs, De-
partment of, 448
Finance, Department of, 447, 449, 450,
451, 460
Finance statistics, 452, 455, 463
Fisheries, Bureau of, 461
Fisheries, Department for Social Affairs,
Commerce, Industry and, 459
Fisheries, statistics of, 448, 455, 462
Forestry statistics, 448, 462, 464
Health statistics, 462
Hollerith System in Norway, 459
Horses, statistics of, 449
Imports, statistics of, 454, 458
Industry, and Fisheries, Department for
Social Affairs, Commerce and, 459
Industry enumerations, special appropria-
tions for, 460
Industry, statistics of, 448, 455, 460, 462
Insanity, statistics of, 453
Interior, Department of, 451, 452
Insurance Institution, State, 460
Insurance statistics, 463
International Appendix (Denmark, Norway,
Sweden), 453
International statistics in Norway, 453, 464
Judicial statistics, 459, 462
Justice, Department of, 460
Labor (see Social Statistics)
Legislation bearing on statistics, 448-449,
458
Manufactures, statistics of, 462
Marriage statistics, 447, 455, 458
NORWAY— Conttnued
Medical Department, 460
Mines, statistics of, 448, 455, 462
Miscellaneous statistics, reports on, 448-
449, 453, 456, 462
Navigation office, 460
Population enumerations, beginning 1769,
447, 450-451, 453, 457-458, 460, 463
Population statistics. 448, 455-456, 462,
463
Post Office, General, 460
Post office statistics, 452, 462
Prices, statistics of, 456'
Prisons, statistics of, 462
Provinces, statistics in, 448-450
Publications, statistical,
Agriculture, 448, 450-451, 462
Banking, 463
Central Statistical Bureau, subject list,
451
Commercial statements of early date, 448
Commerce, 451, 462
Commune of Christiania, 461
Divisions according to letters and num-
bers, 451-452, 453
Early, 447-450
Ecclesiastical and Educational Depart-
ment issues, 451
Educational, 462
Elections, 462
Financial, 463
Fisheries, 462
Forestry, 462
Health, 462
Historical reviews of development of
Norwegian statistics, 465
Industrial, 462
Insurance, 463
International, 453, 454
Judicial, 462
. Manufactures, 462
Mines, 462
Miscellaneous, 462
Octavo substituted for quarto, 453
Official lists, 450-451, 453-454, 461-463
Population, 450, 451, 462, 463
Prisons, 462
Private works, 447, 430, 455, 465
Provincial, 448-450
Social, 463
Vital statistics, 447
Year Book, 453-454
Railroads, statistics of, 452, 462
Reindeer, statistics of, 449
Sanitary statistics, 453
Social Affairs, Commerce, Industry and
Fisheries, Department for. Statistical
Bureau under control of, 459
Social statistics, 455-457, 463, 464 (see
also Population, Wages, Prices)
764
MEMORIAL VOLUME
NORWAY— Continued
Statistical Office, Commune of Chris-
tiania, 461
Statistical Tabulating Office, 1837 (trans-
formed into Central Statistical Bureau
1875), 447, 450, 451, 452
Statistics,
Bureau publications, 450-451
Census 1662, 447
Central Statistical Bureau (see Central)
Denmarlc and, 448, 450, 453
Early organization of, 447—448, 452
Improvements desirable for future de-
velopment, 464
Objects and methods, 454-455
Progress of, 464r-465
Provincial reports, 448-450
Reports of Departments designated by
letters and numbers, 451-452
Strikes (see Social Statistics)
Tabulating Office (see Statistical)
Tabulating Office, Danish-Norwegian, 1797,
201, 202
Telegraph office, 460
Telegraphs, statistics of, 452, 462
Unemployment (see Social Statistics)
Vital Statistics begun 1735, 447
(see also Birth, Death, Marriage)
Wages, statistics of, 453, 456, 463
O'Donnel, Count, 86
Orlow, W., Moscow statistician, 521
Pallain, "Les Douanes Frangaises,'* foot-
notes 268, 269
Parmelee, Julius H., " Statistical Work of the
Federal Government," Yale Bemem,
February, 1911, footnote 642
Peabody, A. W. B., 5
Petty, Sir William, "Political Arithmetick,"
366
Peuchet, "Statistique de la France," foot-
note 285, 291 and footnote
Phelps, Roswell F., Massachusetts Bureau of
Statistics, footnote 690
Philippines, census in, 24, 666
Pickering, John, 5
Pierson, Dr., Dutch statistician, 436, 438
Pigeonneau, M., alluded to, footnote 271
Pitkin, 5,573
Pjeschechow, A., zemstvo statistician, 528
Planiol, M., "Traitfi Elfimentaire de Droit
Civil," footnote 242
Playfair, William, inventor of graphic statis-
tics, 295, 367
Plummer, Gov., 5
Pokrowski, W., Ru' sian statistician, 477,
509-510, 516. 21, 525
Pommelles, Chevalier des, "Tableau de la.
Population de toutes les Provinces de
France," 258, 260, 261, 262, footnotes
258, 261
Pontchartrain, successor of Colbert, 249-250,
254, 258
Porter, Board of Trade Statistics, Great
Britain, 374
Porter, Robert P., introduced automatic
tabulation in United States census, 25»
678-679, 680
Porto Rico, census in, 24, 667
Powers, Dr. Le Grand, aided development
Annual Municipal Statistics series,
United States, 29
Prescott, William, 5
Pubhcations, statistical, of importance in in-
ternational character, 19-20
Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe Jaques, relations
to statistics, Belgian and international,
4, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 158, 362,
388, 434, 471, 553
R&th, Zolt&n, Hungarian statistician, 400
Rawson, Rawson W., 9, 29
Reiffenberg, Baron de, bibliography of an-
cient statistics of Belgium, 125
Rickman, John, in charge of first British
censuses, 367—368
Roberts, Director George E., statistics of
precious metals. United States, 28
Rogers, Thorold, works on agriculture and
prices, work and wages in England,
footnote 241
Roland, reports on imports and exports of
France, 1792, 269 and footnote, 316
Romanow, N., zemstvo statistician, 521
Rondot, de Natalia, " Dictionnaire du Com-
merce," footnote 268
Rossiter, William S., "Century of Population
Growth," 23, 667, 711-712
Royal Statistical Society, relations with
International Statistical Institute, 388-
389
Ramelin, report "On Foundation and Estab-
lishment of a Governmental Office for
German Statistics," 336, 349
Rtmeberg, Ephraim Otto, scientific treatment
of early Swedish statistics, 545
Runeberg, Fredrik, see above, 545
RUSSIA
Agriculture, ministry of, 504-509
Statistics of, 478, 479, 484-489, 497
Wages in, 473
Bank, Peasant, 511-512 (see also Financ;
ministry of)
INDEX
765
RUSSIA— Continued
Banks, statistics of, 497, 512
Birth statistics, 491-492
Census, 480, 483, 484
Central Bureau of statistics, 469, 470
Activities circumscribed, 479
Budget too meagre, 473
Duties, 472
Personnel, 473
Proposed reforms, 499-504
Publications and work of, 479-498
Subjects covered, 478
Work and Publications of, 479-498
Clergy, one of lowest mediums of statisti-
cal investigation, 475, 491, 492 (seealso
StoHatics, Lowest Mediums)
Colonization statistics, 507-509 (see also
Agriculture, ministry of)
Commerce, statistics of, 478, 496-497, 507,
509-510, 512
Community district administration, one of
lowest mediums of statistical investi-
gation, 475-476, 481, 488, 489, 490,
492, 495-496 (see also Statistics,
lowest mediums)
Criminal statistics, publications, 478, 497
(see also Judicial Statistics)
Crop statistics, 475, 477-478, 492-496,
497, 504-506, 511
Death statistics, 491-492
Departmental statistical offices, 504-518
Agriculture, Ministry of, 504-509
Commerce and Industry, Ministries of,
509-510, 512-515
Education, Ministry of Popular, 516
Finance, Ministry of, 505, 509-512
Industry, Ministries of Commerce and,
509-510, 612-515
Justice, Ministry of, 517-518
Peasant Bank, 511-512
Revenue Department, 473, 509-510
Taxation, Department for Direct, 511-
512
Traffic, Ministry of, 515-516
Diseases, infectious, publications, 497
Dwellings, statistics of, 489-490, 496
Economic life, manifestations of, 528-529
Education, Ministry of Popular, 516
Education statistics, publications, 478, 497
Emigration statistics, 507-509 (see also
Population, movement of)
Farm enumeration, 526-527
Finance, Ministry of, 505, 509-512
Statistics of, 478, 497, 512
Fisheries, statistics of, publications, 507
Forestry statistics, 497, 507
Graphic statistics, publications, 507
Hollerith System in Russia, footnote 25
Horses, enumeration of, 479, 488-489
RUSSIA — Continued
Industrial combinations, statistics of large
(non-official), 518-519
Industries, manufacturing, 507
Industry, statistics of, publications, 497,
512, 513
Insurance, statistics, publications, 478
Interior, Ministry of, relations of Central
Bureau of Statistics with, 469, 470,
471, 472, 500, 502, 509
International statistics in Russia, 471
Judicial statistics, publications, 497
Justice, Ministry of, 517-518
Kaluga, 523, 528
Labor, statistics, 483
Landed property, 473-474
Area and utilization of soil, 497
Relation of Peasant Bank to, 511
Studies of, 484-488
Zemstvo investigation, 527
Legislation bearing on statistics, 471, 472,
474, 480, 481, 483, 498-499, 522-524
Marriage statistics, 491
Manufactures, statistics of, publications,
478
Medical aid, statistics of, publications, 497
Military statistics, publications, 497
Mining statistics, publications, 497
Miscellaneous statistics, 478, 479, 483,
497, 528-529
Moscow, 519, 520, 521, 530
Municipal statistics, 470, 490-491, 492,
502, 503, 519-520 (see also Zemstso)
Navigation, statistics of, 478, 515-516
Nischi-Nowgorod, 522
Occupations, statistics of, publications,
497
Pensa, 523, 528
Petrograd, 472, 491, 519, 520, 530
Police, one of lowest mediums of statistical
investigation, 470, 475, 481, 488, 492,
496 (see also Slaiiatics, lowest mediums)
Population, census of, discussed 1870, 477
Enumerations, 471, 472, 480
Movement of, 491-492 (see also Emigror
tion)
Municipal, 490-491
Statistics of, 473, 478, 479, 480-484, 496-
497
Posts, statistics of, 478, 497
Prices, statistics of, 507, 512-513
Provincial statistics, 469-470, 471, 474-
477, 481, 485, 486-490, 491. 493-
494, 498, 499, 500-502, 503, 508, 520
(see also Zemstvo)
Publications, statistical
Agricultural, 484-489
Agriculture, Ministry of, issues, 504-509
Central statistical Bureau, issues, 473-
474, 478, 479-498
766
MEMORIAL VOLUME
RUSSIA — Continued ,
Publications — Continued
Commerce and Industry, Ministries of,
issues, 509-510, 512-515 .
Crops, 492-496 (see also Agriculture,
Ministry of, publications)
Dwellings, 489-490
Early, 470
Education, 516
Finance, department of, issues, 509-512
Forestry, 507
Justice, 517-518
Landed property, 474, 485-488
Municipal population, 490-491
Non-official industrial combinations,
517-518
Peasant Bank, 511-512
Population, 480-483, 491-492
Private works, 477-478, 496, 506, 514,
519
Provincial governors' reports, 469-470,
485-^90, 493-494 (see also Zemstvo)
Revenue Department issues, 509-510
Statistical Committee, 1856, 470
Surveys and tables, 1852, 470
Taxation, 510-512
Traffic, Ministry of, issues, 515-516
Year Books, 496-^98, 507, 519
Zemstvo, 528
Revenue Department, 473, 509-510
Railroad statistics, publications, 478, 497,
511, 515
Siberia, 508
Ssimbirsk, 523
Statistics
Central Bureau of, (see Central)
Departmental offices of, (see Depart-
mental)
Future of, 531-534
History and organiaation, 469-479
Lowest mediums of investigation in,
470, 475-476, 481, 488, 489, 490, 491,
492, 495-496, 498, 499, 500-501, 503
Private enterprises in, 518-519
Proposed reorganization of, 498-504
Zemstvo, 520-531
Strikes, monographs on, 514,
Taxation statistics, indirect, 510, 511-512
Telegraphs, statistics of, 478, 497
Traffic, Ministry of, 515-516
Transportation, statistics of, 507, 515-516
Tscheljabinsk, 508
Tschemigow, 521
Twer, 521
Vodka monopoly, statistics of, 510
Wages in agriculture, 473
Wages, statistics of, publications, 507
Wjatka, 521, 528
Woronescb, 522, 526
Zemstvo statistics, 520-531
Russow, A., zemstvo statistician, 521
Rygg, Prof., article for centennial jubilee of
Norwegian University 1911, 465
S
Saint-Leon, E. Martin, "Histoire des Cor-
porations des Metiers," footnote 267
Saint-Maur, Dupr£s de, mortality tables,
France, 265, 266, footnotes 240, 241,
259
Saint-Pierre, Abb£ de, footnote 255, 283, 303
Saint-Simon, quoted, 258-259
Sauerbeck, Prioe-Index-Numbers (Great
Britain), 384
Saugrain, "Le d6nombrement de la France,"
256, 262
Say, L6on, founder of Bureau de Statistigue
des Finances, 296, 315
Scbary, Dr., head of "Council of Representa-
tives of Commerce and Industry,"
Russia, 519
Schinnern, Scbdttl R. von, Austrian statisti-
cian, 87
Schwartner, Martin, one of first great
Hungarian statistical writers, 394
Schweigaard, A., "Statistics of Norway"
finished by M. B. Tvethe, 450
Scotland (see Great Britain)
Seybert, 573
Shattuck, Dr. George C, early leader Ameri-
can Statistical Association, 10, 11, foot-
note 25
Shattuck, Lemuel, American statistician, 5,
6, 7, 11
Silhouette, M. de, Contrdleur general, 250*
272
Sinclair, Sir John, "Description of Scotland,"
367
Smith, Adam, "Recherches," footnote 241
Smits, Edouard, statistics of Belgium and
Netherlands, 126, 128, 129, 433, foot-
note 128
S6etbeer, 29
Solotarew, General, Russian statistician, 479,
498
Ssemenow, B., Superintendent of Russian
Statistical Division, 513
Ssemenow, P., Russian geographer and statis-
tician, 476-477, 478-479, 481, 484-
486, 489, 493, 495
Statistical service of other countries, relation
of Austria with, 120
Statistics, International Bureau of, 120
Future of science of, 47-49
Growth of in modern governments, 20, 21,
22
Most effective agency toward universal
justice, 48-49
Relation to international law, 48
Stourm, 296, footnotes 224, 281, 282
INDEX
767
Stiu<^ck, Nicholas, early demographic data
relating to the Netherlands, 431
Stscherbina, F., lematvo statistician, 522, 528
Stuart, Dr. C. A. Verriin, "History and
Development of Statistics in the Neth-
erlands," 429-144, 438, 441
Sully, and general statistics of France, 217,
244-247, footnote 245, 253, 267
Sumner, Helen L., labor article by, footnote
637
Sundb&rg, Gustav, Swedish statistician,
footnote 549, 554, 555, 567
Sundt, Eilert, statistical and sociological
works, Norway, 455
Stissmilch, inquiry into conditions of popula-
tion, Germany, 333-334
SWEDEN
Accidents, industrial, 562
Advisory Commission, 553-554, 558-559
(see also Statistics^ Development and
Tabulating Commiasion)
Agriculture, Academy of, 552
Agriculture statistics, 548-549 and foot-
note, 552, 556, 557, 561-562, 565
Banks, statistics of savings, 554, 556, 557,
561-562, 563, 565, 566, 567
Birth statistics, 538, 539, 540, 546 (see
also Demographic data)
Census, report of 1749, oldest in Europe,
542
Central Bureau of Statistics, 553-554, 559,
560
Branches reported on, 560-562
Journal, 554-555
Publications, 554-568, 561-562, 666
Commerce statistics of, reports, 552, 554,
556
Communal statistics, 656, 565, 567-568
Death statistics, 538, 539, 540, 546, 549-
550, 552 (see also Demographic data)
Demographic data, survey of, collected by
old tabular records, 537-538, 550-652
Departments pubUshing statistical data,
553-554, 556-559, 562-563 (see also
Statistics, Development
Ecclesiastical Department, 563
Economy, political, reports, 543
Education, statistics of, 557, 661, 563
Elections, statistics of, 556, 657, 561, 562
Finances of communes, reports on, 556
Finance, statistics of, 562
Fisheries, statistics of, 562
Forestry, statistics of, publication, 565
Gothenburg, 568
Industry, statistics of, 548-549, 562
Instruction in statistics, 563
Insurance statistics, 657, 558
International Appendix (Denmark, Nor-
way, Sweden), 453
International statistical surveys, 554
SWEDEN — Contimud
International statistics. Historical Sta-
tistical Handbook, 567
Judicial statistics, 556, 561, 562
Labor statistics, publication, 558, 661, 562,
563
Land statistics, 557
Laplanders, data collected in regard to,
661
Legislation bearing on statistics, 538, 540,
542
Local government, statistics of, 557
Lund, 663, 569
Malm6, 567-568
Manufactures, reports on, 652, 664, 656
Marriage statistics, 637, 540, 548, 649
(see also Demographic data)
Medical Department, 562-663
Military statistics, 558
Mining, statistics of, 552, 664, 566, 662
Miscellaneous statistics, reports, 552, 556,
557, 560, 561-662, 563
Navigation statistics, reports, 564, 556, 562
Occupation, and causes of death, statistics
of, 545, 546-547
Pensions, statistics of, 566
Population enumeration proposed 1728,
638
Population statistics, 537, 539, 640-543,
546, 648, 549, 556, 561, 562, 663-565
(see also Demographic data)
Post office statistics, 563, 566-567, 660,
561
Prices, statistics of, 662
Prisons, statistics of, 566, 661, 566
Provincial statistics, reports of governors,
538, 548-549, 565, 566, 557
PubUcations, statistical.
Academy of Science proceedings con-
stitute oldest printed, 644
Agricultural, 548-549, 552, 556, 557,
561-662, 565
Banks, savings, 554, 566, 657, 661, 565,
666
Census 1749, 542
Central Bureau issues, 554-555, 561-
662, 566
Commercial, 552, 556, 562, 665, 566
Communal, 667-668
"Contributions to the Official Statistics
of Sweden," all reports under common
title (see Official publications)
Death, causes of, 560
Departmental, 666-559
Earliest, 537-538, 539, 542, 544-545
Educational, 557, 563, 666
Elections, 667, 662, 566
Financial, 562
Historical Statistical Handbooks, 567
Industrial, 562, 566
768
MEMORIAL VOLUME
SWEDEN— Continued
Publioations — CoTitinued
Insurance, 557, 565-566
International appendix, 453
International surveys, 554
Judicial, 556, 562
Labor, 658, 562
Land, 557, 565
Local government, 557
Manufactures, 552, 556, 565
Military, 558
Mining, 552, 556, 562, 565
Miscellaneous, 552, 556-557, 558, 562,
563, 565, 566
Navigation, 556, 562, 565
Official lists, 552-583, 565-566
Population, 539, 555, 556, 561, 565
Poet office, 553, 557, 565
Prices, 562
Prisons, 556, 561, 566
Private works, 539, 542, 544-545, foot-
note 549, 554, 555, 567, 568-569
Provincial, 538, 448-549, 555-556, 557
Railways, 557, 563, 565, 566
Registers, early parish, 537-538
Sanitation, 558, 562, 565
Socia,l, 562, 566
Sources of information and literature,
appendix, 568-569
Statistical Journal, 566, 568
Tabulating Commission issues, 543, 549
Trade, Board of, issues, 554
Telegraphs, 557, 565
Vital statistics, 556
Works, public, 557
Year Book, 561, 566, 567, 568
Railway Department, 563
Railways, statistics of, reports, 557, 560,
561, 563
Registers, parish, relation to population,
537-538, 562, 563, 564
Rescripts (see Legislation)
Sanitation, statistics of, report, 1761,
543, 558, 562
Social Affairs, Department of, 562
Statistics,
Central Bureau of (see Central)
Departments, publishing, 553—554, 556—
559, 562-563
Development and publications, 552-561
History of, 537-552
Present organization of, 561-568
Publications, development and, 552-
561
Stockholm, 554, 556, 563, 567-568
Strikes, statistics of, 562
Tabular records, 540-552
Tabulating Commission, 553-554, 559-
561, 563 (see also 4-iimaory Com-
mission)
SWEDEN — Continued
Taxation lists, relation to population,
537, 554
Trade, Board of, 562
Trade, statistics of, reports, 556
Telegraphs, statistics of, 556-557, 561
Uppsala, 537, 544, 563
Vital statistics, reports, 556 (see also
Population, Birth, Death)
Works, statistics of public, 557
Taoh6, Dr. J. C, director of Canadian census,
1871, 180, 181, 182, 184
Tarbfi, M., financial publications, 1792
(France), 282
Tarnowski, E., supervisor of statistical
branch of Ministry of Justice, Russia,
5, 7
Terray, Abbfi, circular addressed to intend-
ants, 1772, 262-264, footnotes 263,
264, 265
Thiers, M., minister of Commerce, 1833,
France 284, 292
Thirring, Gustav, Hungarian statistician, 401
Thornton, J. Wingate, early leader American
Statistical Association, 12
Tolstoi, Count D. A., minister of Interior,
Russia, 478-479
Tooke, Thomas, History of Prices, 1793-1856,
footnote 241
Tourquan, ' ' Manuel de Statistique practique, ' '
footnote 290
Trojnitzki, N. A., Ssemenow's successor 479,
486
Tscherwinski, P., zemstvo statistician, 521
Tschuprow, A. I., attempts to improve
zemstvo statistics, 530
Tvethe, M. B., "Statistics of Norway," begun
by Mr. Schweigaard, 450
Unemployed, International Union for dealing
with the Problem of the, Ghent, 121
UNITED STATES
Accidents, industrial reports, 639
Agriculture Census, 26, 34, 666
Census division of, 678
Decline in growth of, 46
Department of, 576
Statistics of, 595, 642-652, 661, 671, 672,
673, 674, 675, 677, 681, 682, 697
Alaska, census division on, 678
Statistics relating to, 677
Workmen's compensation in, 696
Aldrich report, 682-683
Animal Industry, Bureau of, 643
Arbitration, mediation and conciliation,
697-698
INDEX
769
XmiTED STATES— Coniinued
Banks, statistics of, 661, 663 (see also
Monetary Commission)
Birth statistics, 30, 41, 43, 641-642, 663, 667
Biological survey, 643
Cable (see Commerce Commission, Inter-
state)
California
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725
General statistical administration, 696
Industrial statistics in, 708-710
Workmen's compensation in, 696
Census Bureau statistics, historical sum-
mary of work, 661-682 (see also Cen-
sus Office)
Census Office, 7-8, 23-28, 34, 576-577, 605,
680-682 (see also Census Bureau)
Chemistry, Bureau of, 643
Child labor (see Labor statistics)
Children's Bureau, 576, 641-642
Church statistics, census division of, 678
Civil war veterans, statistics of, 678
Classes, special census division of, 678
Coal trade, statistics of, reports, 602, 604
Colorado, labor statistics in, 698-699
Commerce and labor. Department of, 615,
687-688
Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domes-
tic, 29, 631, 632-633
Commerce Commission, Interstate, 676,
605-614, 615, 616, 620, 623, 624
Commerce, Department of, 576, 682
Commerce, Division of Internal, 601
Conunerce foreign, defined, 629
Statistics of, 29, 578-597, 663 (see also
Markets)
Commerce, internal, defined, 629
Statistics of, 36-38, 597-605, 621-622,
623, 624, 671, 672, 673, 675 (see also
Commerce Commission, Interstate)
Connecticut, labor statistics in, 693
Corporations, Bureau of, 615-624
Corporations, other than banks and com-
mon carriers, statistics of, 614-625
Cotton crops, census of, 589
Statistics of, 37, 599, 602, 604, 617, 619,
646, 666, 669
Crime, statistics of, 34, 35, 681
Crime (see Paupmsm and)
Crop Estimates, Bureau of, 644-652
Cuba, census of, 24, 666
Currency (see Banks)
Customs (see Commerce, Foreign)
Death statistics, 30, 34, 663, 666, 667, 669,
674, 675, 676, 677, 681 (see also Child-
ren's Bureau; Labor Statistics)
Debt, census, of 666
Statistics of, 668, 677-678, 681
Defective classes, census of, 666
Statistics of, 34, 35, 668, 681
£0
UNITED STATES— Conttnued
Delinquency, juvenile (see Labor Statistics)
Divorce statistics, 636, 666
Duties (see Commerce, Foreign)
Economic situation, 43-47
Education, Board of, 576
Census division of, 678
Commission on National Grants to Voca-
tional, 686
Industrial, statistics of, 636, 637
Statistics of, 659-661, 672-673, 675
Emigration problem, 45-46
Employment statistics, reports, 639
Engineering, 643
Erdman act, 40
Exports (see Commerce, Foreign)
Farms, Homes, Mortgages, Census divi-
sion of, 678
Federal government statistics
Agriculture, 642-652
Banks, 661
Census Bureau, 661-682
Children's Bureau, 641-642
Commerce, foreign, 578-597
Commerce, internal, 597-605
Corporations, other than banks and
common carriers, 614-625
Education, 659-661
Immigration, 652-659
Labor, 633-642
Markets, 625-633
Railways, 605-614
Statistical inquiry, temporary agencies
of, 682-686
Statistical service, organization of, 686-
689
Finance, census division of, 678
Insular and Municipal, publication, 667
Municipal, 669, 725-728
Statistics of, 602, 666, 681
Fisheries, census of, 666
Census division of, 678
Statistics of 580, 587, footnote 588, 626,
671, 673, 675, 681-682, 687
Florida, population census in, 715
Forestry (see Agriculture Statistics)
General administration, factory inspection
and statistics, 695-696
Geography, census division of, 678
Hawaii
Labor reports of, 635
Workmen's compensation in, 696
Homes (see Farms)
Horticultural Board, 643
Illinois
General statistical administration in, 696
Industrial statistics in, 706-707
Immigration Commission, 683-684
Statistics of, 29, 41-45, 575, 599, 601, 639,
652-659, 683-684
770
MEMORIAL VOLUME
UNITED STATES— Conimued
Imports (see Commerce, Foreign)
Indian Territory, census of, 666
Indiana, finances, statiBtics of municipal,
725, 727
Indians, census divieion on, 678
Statistical returns relating to, 677
Industrial Commission, investigation by,
683
Industrial Relations, commission on, 685-
686 *
Industry, statistics of, 39-41, 575, 596-597,
601, 616-617, 618-619, 631, 674, 675,
692-711 (see also Labor)
Insurance, census division of, 678
Statistics of workingmen's reports, 636-
637 (see also Ijabor)
Interior, Department of, railway statistics,
605
Internal Revenue Bureau, 28-29
International statistics in United States,
636-637, 639
Iowa
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725,
727
Population census in, 715-717
Iron, statistics of, reports, 37. 602, 604,
636, 637, 639 (see also Labor)
Judicial statistics, 681
Kansas, population census in, 717-718
Xabor
Bureau of, 39-40, 576
Child, publications. 667
Department of, 689
Problem, 40-41
Statistics 626, 633-641
Legislation bearing on statistics
Federal, 577, 578-579, 583, 584-585, 586,
591, 592, 594, 597-598, 600, 602, 605-
607, 609, 613, 614, 615, 622-623, 626,
631, 633-635, 642. 652-654, 672-673,
674, 676, 679. 681. 682. 683, 684, 685,
687, 689
States, 692, 714, 715, 717, 718, 719, 720,
721, 722-723, 725, 726
Lumber, statistics of, reports, 602, 603, 604,
616, 617-618
Manufactures
and Internal Traffic, division of, Bureau
of Statistics. Treasury Department,
699, 601
Bureau of, 626-627
Census division of, 678
Census of, 26, 34, 666
Inquiry by Bureau of Corporations, 619
Statistics of, 584, 586, 595-598, 600, 626,
661, 668, 671. 672, 673, 675, 676, 677,
681, 682 (see also Markets)
Markets, statistics of foreign, 625-633
Marriage statistics, 636, 666
UNITED STATES— Conitrtued
Massachusetts
Death statistics in. 32-33
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725,
726, 727
General statistical administration, 696
Industrial statistics in, 702-704
Labor statistics in, 692
Miscellaneous statistics, 5
Population census in, 5, 713, 718-719
Sanitary survey, 1 1 ,
Statistical tables, 5
Workmen's compensation, 696
Michigan, mines and mining, 697
Mines and mining, 697
Mines, Bureau of, 676
Census division of, 678
Census of, 666
Statistics of, 626, 672, 673, 675, 681, 682
Minimum wage commissions, 696-697
Minnesota, finances, statistics of munici-
pal, 725
Miscellaneous census statistics, 599, 602,
603, 604, 616-617, 618, 619, 666, 667,
675, 677, 681-682
Monetary commission, 684
Mortgages (see Farms)
Municipal statistics publications, 45-46.
667-668 (see also Finance, Municipal)
Naturalization Division (see Immigration
StatisHcs)
Navigation statistics, 575, 671, 673 (see
also Commerce, Foreign)
Negro population, 667, 678
New Jersey
Death statistics, 33
Population census in, 722
New York
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725
General statistical administration, 69&-
696
Industrial statistics in, 699-702
Population census in, 713, 719-720
Workmen's compensation, 696
North Dakota, population census in, 720
Occupation census, 666
Occupations, statistics of, 682
Ohio
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725, 727
General statistical administration, 696
Industrial statistics in, 705-706
Labor statistics in, 693
Oil statistics reports, 618. 619
Oklahoma, census of, 666
Oregon, finances, statistics of municipal,
725
Pauperism and Crime, census division of,
678
Pennsylvania
General statistical administration, 696
INDEX
771
UNITED STATES— Corrftnued
PennsylTania — Continued
Industrial statistics in, 707-708
Labor statistics in, 693
Mines and mining, 697
Pensioners, statistics of publications, 39,673
Philippine Islands, census of, 24, 666
Population, census of, 34, 589, 666
Census division of, 678
Estimates of, 667
Negro, 667, 678
Slave, 674, 675
State censuses of, 711-725
Statistics of, 29, ,599, 661, 670-672, 673,
674-675, 676, 677, 680, 681, 682 (see
also Immiffration)
Porto Bico, census in, 24
Industries, mineral and electrical, 667
Post, Parcel (see Commerce Commission,
Interstate)
Prices, Conunittee on Wages and, 685-686
Statistics of, reports, 602, 617, 619, 636,
637, 638, 682-683 (see also Labor
Statistics)
Publications, statistical
Accidents, industrial, 639
Agricultural, 29, 643, 646-647, 648-649,
671, 673, 674, 675
Agriculture, Department of, issues, 29,
576
Banks, 661
Birth, 641-642, 667
Census Bureau issues, 30, 665, 666-669,
670-672, 673, 674, 677, 678, 679
Children's Bureau issues, 576, 641-642
Coal trade, 602, 604
Commerce, Department of, issues, 576
Commerce, foreign, 29, 37-38, 580-590
Commerce, internal, 599, 601, 602-607,
673
Cotton, 602, 604, 617, 619, 666, 669
Death, 667, 669, 674, 675, 676
Debt, 668
Defectives, 668
Divorce, 636, 666
Education, Bureau of, issues, 576
Education, industrial, 636, 637
Educational, 659-661, 675
Employment, 639
Finance, insular and municipal, 667
Finance, mimicipal, 669
Financial, 602
Fisheries, 671, 675
Immigration, 639, 654-659, 683-684
Industrial, 601, 616-617, 618-619, 674,
675
Industrial Commission issues, 683
Industrial Relations Commission issues,
686
Insurance, workingmen's, 636-637
Iron, 602, 604, 636, 637, 639
UNITED STATES— Continued
Publications — Continued
Labor, 635-641
Labor, child, 667
Labor Statistics, Bureau of, issues, 576
Lumber, 602, 603, 604, 616, 617-618
Manufactures, 668, 671, 673, 675, 676
Markets, 628-629, 630, 631
Marriage, 636, 666
Mines, 675
Mines, Bureau of, issues, 576
Miscellaneous, 602, 603, 604, 616-617,
618, 619, 667, 675
Monetary Commission issues, 684
Municipal, 29, 667-668 (see also Publica-
tion, FiTiance, Municipal)
Navigation, 671, 673
Negroes, 667
Oil, 618, 619
Pensioners, 673
Population, 667, 670-672, 673, 674-675,
676
Porto Rico, 667
Prices, 602, 617, 619, 636, 637, 638, 682-
683
Private works, 5, 37, 38
Railroads, 601, 604, 605-607, 608, 609,
610, 611
Social, 674, 675
State publications
California, 709-710
Florida, 715
Illinois, 706-707
Iowa, 716-717
Kansas, 717-718
Massachusetts, 702-704, 718-719
New Jersey, 722
New York, 701-702, 719-720
North Dakota, 720
Ohio, 705-706
Pennsylvania, 707-708
Rhode Island, 723-724
South Dakota, 720-721
Wisconsin, 710
Wyoming, 721
Steel, 636, 637, 639
Tariff Board issues, 684-6S5
Taxation, 668
Tobacco, 602, 604, 616, 617, 618, 666,
669
Trade Commission, Federal, issues, 576
Transportation, 601, 604, 619, 688
Treasury Department issues, 576 (see
PublicatumSf Commerce)
Unemployment, 639
Vital statistics, 31, 32, 33-34, 667
Wages, 636, 637, 638, 639, 675, 682-683
Wages and Prices Committee issues, 685-
686
Wealth, 668
Race admixture, problem of, 41-43
772
MEMORIAL VOLUME
UmXED STATES— Coniinwcd
Railroads, statistics of. 559. 600. 601, 604,
605-614, 623, 624, 677, 682 (see also
Commerce Commiaaion, Interstate)
Religious bodies, census of. 666
Statistics of, 681
Revision and Results, census division on,
678
Rhode Island
Death, statistics in, 32
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725
Population census in, 713, 722-725
Slave population, 674, 675
Social statistics, 674. 675, 677, 681
Census division of, 678
Soils, Bureau of. 643
South Dakota, population census in, 720-
721
State statistics, 690-739
Agriculture, 697
Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation,
697-698
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725-
728
General administration, factory inspec-
tion and statistics, 695-696
Industrial statistics, 692-711
Mines and mining, 697
Minimum Wage Commissions, 696-697
Population, 711-726
Work of the several states of the United
States in field of statistics, appendix
729-739
Workmen's compensation, 696
Statistical bureaus, merging of, 625, 631
Statistical inquiry, temporary agencies of.
682-686
Statistical service, organization of, 686-6S9
Statistics
Census office, 576-577
Constitutional provisions giving Con-
gress power in, 577
Departments publishing, 574-577
Federal government, 577-689 (see Fed^
eraJ)
Progress of, in U. S. as compared with
other countries, 19-35
State, 690-739 (see Work of the several
states of the United States in the field of)
Steel, statistics of, reports, 37, 636, 637,
639
Strikes, 40
Tariff Board, 684-685
Tariff, statistics of (see Commerce, Foreign)
Taxation census, 666
Taxation statistics, 668, 681
Telegraphs, census of, 666
Statistics of, 624 (see Commerce Com^
mission. Interstate)
UNITED STATES— Continued
Telephones, census of, 666
Statistics of, 624 (see Commerce CommiS'
sion. Interstate)
Tobacco statistics, reports, 602, 604, 616,
617, 618, 666, 669
Trade Commission, Federal, 576, 622-625,
689
Trade statistics, commerce and, 595 (see
Commerce, also Markets)
Traffic, Internal, Manufactures and, divi-
sion of, 599, 601
Treasury Department. 674-577
Commerce, relations with, 578-585, 586-
605
Immigration, relations with. 652
Railways statistics, relations with. 605
Transportation, census division of, 678
Of products, 586
Statistics of, 600, 601, 604, 619, 626, 681,
683
Unemployment statistics reports^ 639
Vital statistics, 31, 32-33-34, 667, 668
Census division of. 678
Wages and Prices, Committee on, 685-686
Wages, statistics of, 586, 599, 601, 633, 636,
637, 638, 639, 675, 681, 682-683 (see
also Labor Statistics)
Washington, finances, statistics of munici-
pal, 725
Wealth, census of, 666
Statistics of, 661, 668
Wisconsin
Finances, statistics of municipal, 725, 726
General statistical administration. 696
Industrial statistics in, 710-711
Workmen's compensation, 696
Women labor (see Labor Statistics)
Work of the several* states of the United
States in the field of statistics, appen-
dix 729-739
Workmen's compensation, 696
Workmen's insurance, 39
Wyoming, population census in, 721
Valpy, started series of Annual Abstracts of
Board of Trade, Great Britain, 374
Van Buren, Martin, 5
Vargha, JuUus von, Hungarian statistician,
400
Vauban, French statistician, 18th century,
251, 256, 259, 262, 279, 283, footnotes
253, 263
Verschuer, Dr. W. A., Baron von, chairman
of Central Commission for Statistics,
Netherlands, 436
ViUers-Cotteretg, ordinance of, 253
Viollet, " Histoire du Droit Francais, "
footnote 242
INDEX
773
Vital statistics in United States American
Statistical Association advocates secur-
ing, 6
Value of 30, 31, 32
Vizaknai, Anton, Hungarian statistician, 400
Vuitry, M., "Etudes sur le Regime Financier
de la France avant 1789," 225, foot-
notes 223, 224, 239
Votius, footnote 256
W
Wales (see Great Britain)
Walker, Hon. Amasa, early leader American
Statistical Association, 12
Walker, Gen. Francis A., American statistician
8, 9, 12, 13, 20, 22, footnote 25, 573-574,
669, 670
Warden, G., tables published 1706-1740,
footnote 241
Wargentin, Per., one of founders of Swedish
statistics, 538, 542, 543-545, 547
Warser, W., zemstvo statistician, 614, 521
Watson, Alkanah, 573
Waxweiler, Em, Belgian statistician, 157,
162, 164
Webster, Pelletiah, 573
Whateley, Archbishop, founder of Dublin
Society, 386
Wilbur, Dr. Cressy L., Vital Statistics,
United States 33, 34
Willcox, Prof. Walter F., Negro Bulletin, 23,
footnote 25
Wine-growing, Hungary's participation in
international statistics of, 396
Winslow, Charles H., labor article by, foot-
note 637
Winslow, Governor, 6
Winthrop, Thomas L., 5
Witt, Johan de, memoir of 1671, Netherlands,
430
Wolcott, Oliver, Jr., Secretary of Treasury
1796, United States, footnote 581
Wolff, Christian, quoted, 334
Woodbiiry, Levi, 5
Worcester, Joseph E., early leader American
Statistical Association, 12
Wright, Col. Carroll D., early leader American
Statistical Association, 8, 12, 13, foot-
note 25, 39, 635-636
"History of United States Census,"
footnote 670
Warzburger, Dr. Eugene, "History and
development of official statistics in the
German Empire," 333-362, 349
Young, Arthur, statistics used in economics,
Great Britain, 367
Young, director. Bureau of Commerce,
Treasury Department, 19, 586, 599-600
Zimmermann, Dr., introduced statistics in
Great Britain, 367
i-!Miii-;iiiiti:iil ill
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